UK’s Dixons Carphone suffers customer data cyberattack

LONDON: Dixons Carphone, the British electrical-to-mobiles chain, announced yesterday that it had suffered a major cyberattack that attempted to compromise 5.9 million customer payment cards.

The company said that while 5.8 million of the cards had chip and pin protection, about 105,000 non-EU issued payment cards without such safeguards had been compromised.

“As part of a review of our systems and data, we have determined that there has been unauthorised access to certain data held by the company,” the group Dixons Carphone said in a statement.

“We promptly launched an investigation, engaged leading cyber security experts and added extra security measures to our systems. We have taken action to close off this access and have no evidence it is continuing.”

It said that there was no evidence of “any fraudulent use of the data”, adding that it had informed the police and relevant UK watchdogs.

“Separately, our investigation has also found that 1.2 million records containing non-financial personal data, such as name, address or email address, have been accessed.

“We have no evidence that this information has left our systems or has resulted in any fraud at this stage,” the statement said.

Apologising for the situation, Dixons Carphone CEO Alex Baldock, said the group had shut down the unauthorised access.

“Cybercrime is a continual battle for business today and we are determined to tackle this fast-changing challenge,” he added. – AFP