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Bloomberg
A cyberattack at Dixons Carphone Plc affected almost 6 million payment cards as hackers sought access to customers’ personal data in another challenge for new Chief Executive Officer Alex Baldock.
The retailer, already struggling with a slowing mobile phone market in the UK and the rise of Amazon.com Inc., said 1.2 million records containing nonfinancial information such as names, addresses and emails were breached. There’s no evidence of any fraudulent use of the data, the company said. Dixons shares were down 3.4 percent to 191 pence at 12:53 p.m. in London.
About 5.8 million cards affected had chip-and-PIN protection, the company said, and the data accessed for these cards do not include the personal identification codes or other authentication details enabling cardholders to be identified or purchases to be made. About 105,000 cards issued outside the European Union, without chip-and-PIN protection, were compromised, Dixons said. The hack began in July but was discovered only last week, it said.
It’s “alarming to see how long it took the company to respond to the breach,†Simon McCalla, chief technology officer of cybersecurity provider Nominet, said by email.
Baldock, who took over in April, last month issued the company’s third profit warning since August and criticized the lack of investment in stores and the poor performance of the mobile phone business.
Dixons Carphone has struggled as consumers upgrade their cellphones less frequently. Last month, the retailer forecast that earnings this year will slump about 21 percent to 300 million pounds ($400 million) as it closes stores in a contracting UK household-electronics market. The cyberattack involved the processing systems of the Currys PC World and Dixons Travel stores, the company said.
The Dixons hack is the latest of a series of cyberattacks afflicting companies and other organizations around the wor-ld. About 150 million users of Under Armour Inc.’s MyFitnessPal nutrition-tracking app had their accounts hacked, while Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc lost sales because of a cyberattack that disrupted its supply chain in 2017. The WannaCry ransomware attack crippled parts of the UK’s National Health Service last year.
Under the new European General Data Protection Regulation companies can be fined up to 4 percent of their sales for data breaches.