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7-Eleven Stores In Denmark Closed Due To a Cyberattack (bleepingcomputer.com) 32

Posted by BeauHD from the digital-attacks-with-physical-harm dept.
7-Eleven stores in Denmark shut down today after a cyberattack disrupted stores' payment and checkout systems throughout the country. Bleeping Computer reports: The attack occurred early this morning, August 8th, with the company posting on Facebook that they were likely "exposed to a hacker attack." The translated statement says that the company has closed all the stores in the country while investigating the security incident: ""Unfortunately, we suspect that we have been exposed to a hacker attack today, Monday 8 August 2022. This means that we cannot use checkouts and/or receive payment. We are therefore keeping the stores closed until we know the extent. We naturally hope that we can open the stores again soon." - 7-Eleven DK." At this time, there are no further details about the attack, including whether ransomware was involved, which has become the most common cyberattack causing wide-scale outages.
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7-Eleven Stores In Denmark Closed Due To a Cyberattack More

7-Eleven Stores In Denmark Closed Due To a Cyberattack

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  • The shop had a powercut, guy working there gave me a hacksaw to cut them by hand. LoL. It is insane that they'd actually close because no power. Surely they could have wrote the orders on a piece of paper and put them through the till later?

    • At the very least, they could have continued to accept cash transactions.

      • > At the very least, they could have continued to accept cash transactions.

        Nobody uses cash in Denmark. It's all MobilePay, Apple Pay, plastic or apps. It's been years sine I last saw cash.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbengt ( 874751 )

          Nobody uses cash in Denmark. It's all MobilePay, Apple Pay, plastic or apps. It's been years sine I last saw cash.

          And this outage shows that cash does have some advantages.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by linuxguy ( 98493 )

            Nobody uses cash in Denmark. It's all MobilePay, Apple Pay, plastic or apps. It's been years sine I last saw cash.

            And this outage shows that cash does have some advantages.

            If a very small percentage of your customers use cash, then it becomes a very expensive thing to support. Handling cash introduces a whole host of challenges. It may be cheaper to accept occasional downtime instead.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by Seahawk ( 70898 )

              Stores are required by law(with a few specific exceptions) to take cash as payment in Denmark.

          • Forget the cash, how they heck can they buy their Slurpee(tm) with bitcoin if the network is down!?!

          • Cash certainly makes you think... while you are waiting in line for the idiot still using cash to find the right amount in their wallet. Cash is also a great carrier of germs. I bet corona and monkey pox loves it.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

              Cash is also a great carrier of germs. I bet corona and monkey pox loves it.

              It must be hell being that paranoid.

            • How can you be THAT paranoid about germs on cash, and completely miss the whole "reptilians are tracking my electronic purchases" angle?

          • And this outage shows that cash does have some advantages.

            Yes, in the 0.0001% of cases where you need your slurpee now you'll be disadvantaged due to a lack of cash. Just like having buttons on the TV has advantages when the remote batteries go flat.

            I'm sure people will get over the minor inconvenience.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Corbets ( 169101 )

          I’ve lived here for 4 years and have been visiting for 10 years before that (Danish girlfriend -> wife + kids). In all that time, I’ve never used cash. Dankort / credit cards have always been a sort of default, and yeah, alt the phone-based solutions (including the pioneering MobilePay) are just saturating payments these days.

          It’s a very digital society. Kinda makes the crazy high taxes (I lived in Switzerland previously) worth it. ;-)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by GoTeam ( 5042081 )

            Danish girlfriend -> wife + kids)

            Are your wife and kids ok with you having a Danish girlfriend?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        They may have lost inventory control, or security (cameras watching transactions, with the transaction data overlaid). The tills might not be working if they run some kind of embedded Windows that needs network access to function (e.g. to match bar codes to prices).

    • It had nothing at all to do with a power cut.

      The policy is to use the register or nothing, and the peons in the stores can't override that.

    • All prices are in the system, so that is one problem. The other problem is who has a pen and pencil anymore in a business setting? Can the cash drawers even open without power?

      The final problem is that most cashiers appear to have problems doing math. I have seen cashiers try to do on the fly math that devolves into a sad and embarrassing situation all too frequently. The smart ones remember that their dumb phone has a calculator app.

    • Naw, stores are so dependent upon networking now. Make in Denmark they can still do arithmetic and work a calculator, but I remember even in the 90's that one computer store lost its network and they actually had 3 people at each cashier station: the cashier, the person using the calculator, and the person reading the store's procedures manual...

      I know in the 2000s that Finland still used a lot of cash, but I suspect that now many people aren't using cash anymore. But then I'm surprised that they have 7-E

      • I haven't even touched cash since 2019 and the only reason for that was that my weed dealer didn't take credit card. The only time I see physical money is at my local store and it's *always* 60+ people that sometimes pay with cash but it gets more and more rare. Every time I see a person pay with cash I just roll my eyes because it takes time counting the bills and coins and then it takes time to hand back left over money. Compare that to a simple touchless blip on my credit card where the worst situation i

        • No, just 7-Eleven is kind of low class in some ways. Cheap quality food that's overpriced, and lotto tickets.

          As for cash, in a foreign country you overpay by far if you use a credit card. But it was fifteen years ago I was overseas and they took cash. Also, you do pay extra with a credit card, though most stores just charge everyone the extra credit card rate to keep it simple. Though I think there are still some gas stations that give a cash discount for that reason.

          I have used credit card more now duri

          • Paying online I feel is still risky, giving out credit card numbers over the web

            For this use case your bank website probably has a single-use card number generator.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      . It is insane that they'd actually close because no power. Surely they could have wrote the orders on a piece of paper and put them through the till later?

      Not really. If you're talking about a small mom and pop, then reconciliation of the till with the receipts is fairly easy.

      A company like 7-11 has inventory systems and other systems all tired together so while it's possible to reconcile everything manually transacted, it can be a huge pain and require skilled people to do it. Chances are it's easier and

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by havana9 ( 101033 )
        Another thing is that, to make receipts by hand they can't be a simple notebook sheet or the like in most places. One needs a special multi copy receipt book and has to have all the paper books to record the transactions.
        A mom and pop shop could have some receipt book somewhere and the number of transaction it's low. A big supermarket, owned by a corporation has automated procedures and no receipt books.

    • Surely they could have wrote the orders on a piece of paper and put them through the till later?

      That's a great way to enable employee theft. There's a reason that only family owned business will allow paper based order reconciliation these days. Too many employees stealing and covering it up by fudging the numbers in the system.

      It's a 7-11. Like any major multinational chain, you use the digital cash register or nothing at all. Be happy they even still accept cash.

  • "Let's nuke em. Let's nuke the bas****s." -- President Whitmore

    The true start to WWIII is going to be over something incredibly stupid. Might as well be Slurpees.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      Speaking of Presidents... The other day it was so hot that Bill Clinton got a Slurpee, and then he went to 7-Eleven.

  • ...the food machines to make nutritious food, and nobody wanted it.

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