Grocery stores and pharmacies owned by Canadian food retail giant Sobeys have been experiencing IT systems issues since last weekend.
Sobeys, one of Canada’s biggest supermarket chain, with 134,000 employees servicing a network of 1,500 stores in all ten provinces under multiple retail banners, includes Sobeys, Safeway, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo, Thrifty Foods, and Lawtons Drugs.
Sobeys’ parent company Empire revealed in a press release that while its grocery stores were still open, some services were impacted by this company-wide IT issue.
In addition, some of the Company’s pharmacies are experiencing technical difficulties in fulfilling prescriptions.
The company also added that it’s working on resolving the issues affecting its IT systems to reduce store disruption.
A separate statement published on Sobeys’ official website states that all stores remained open and were “not experiencing significant disruptions.”
According to employee reports, all computers were locked out in affected Sobeys stores, with point-of-sale (POS) and payment processing systems still online and working since they’re set up to work on a separate network.
The company has not disclosed any information linking this ongoing outage to a cyberattack, but according to local media reports, Canadian provincial privacy watchdogs from Quebec and Alberta have confirmed receiving “confidentiality incident” notifications from the retailer.
Such alerts are only sent following incidents where personal information has been accessed in a breach.
Also, based on ransom notes and negotiation chats, the attackers deployed Black Basta ransomware payloads to encrypt systems on Sobeys’ network.
Some of the photographs shared by Sobeys employees online also show in-store computers displaying a Black Basta ransom note.
Black Basta ransomware was first spotted in attacks in mid-April 2022, with the operation quickly ramping up its attacks against companies worldwide in the coming months.
Some researchers believe that Black Basta is linked to the Conti ransomware which is not confirmed.
Image Credits : Betakit
The post Canadian food retail giant Sobeys hit by ransomware first appeared on Cybersafe News.