Cyber gang threatens Boots, BBC, BA after data hack - report

According to the BBC, the Clop group, believed to be Russia based made the threat in broken English on the dark web.

Also targeted in the hack were BA stablemate Aer Lingus, the Nova Scotia Government and the University of Rochester after the gang broke into a piece of popular business software called MOVEit and used that access to get into the databases of potentially hundreds of other companies.

“This is announcement to educate companies who use Progress MOVEit product that chance is that we download a lot of your data as part of exceptional exploit," Clop posted online, the BBC reported.

Clop told organisations affected to email the gang to start a negotiation on the crew’s darknet portal, the broadcaster added.

Earlier this week UK payroll provider Zellis said that eight of its customers have been impacted by the “global issue”, which may have exposed personal information, including names, addresses, and banking details.

Boots confirmed it made its staff aware of the data vulnerability, "which affected a third-party software used by one of our payroll providers, included some of our team members’ personal details".

British Airways, which has around 34,000 people employed in the UK, also confirmed it was one of the companies to be caught up in the cyber attack.

“We have notified those colleagues whose personal information has been compromised to provide support and advice,” a spokesman said.

The hack comes after outsourcing firm and government contractor Capita was recently affected by a cyber attack that saw some customer, supplier and staff data accessed illegally.

Capita said it faces a bill of up to £20m to deal with the incident, including for recovery and remediation costs and to invest in reinforcing its cyber security defences.

Reporting by Frank Prenesti for Sharecast.com