Luxury London department store Harrods has revealed that some of its e-commerce customers have had their personal information stolen via a third-party breach.
The company issued a statement over the weekend claiming a threat actor had been in contact with the store, but that it refused to engage.
“We proactively informed affected e-commerce customers on Friday that the impacted personal data is limited to basic personal identifiers including name and contact details, where this information has been provided. It does not include account passwords or payment details,” it clarified.
“It is important to note that the information was taken from a third-party provider and is unconnected to attempts to gain unauthorized access to some Harrods systems earlier this year.”
That May incident came on the back of several retail breaches linked to the Scattered Spider group, including attacks on M&S and the Co-op which resulted in losses of hundreds of millions of pounds.
Read more on retail breaches: Louis Vuitton UK Latest Retailer Hit by Data Breach
M&S estimated losses of around £300m ($400m) following an Easter weekend attack which forced its e-commerce business offline for weeks. The Co-op last week revealed it lost around £206m ($277m) after being forced to shut down various IT systems as a precaution following a similar ransomware attempt.
Harrods seems to have avoided a similar fate, although it was forced to take some precautionary measures at the time.
Retail Ransomware on the Rise
Reports suggest that as many as 430,000 customer records may have been impacted by the latest breach incident at the luxury Knightsbridge store.
“We would like to reiterate that no payment details or order history information has been accessed and the impacted personal data remains limited to basic personal identifiers as advised previously,” it said.
The supply chain continues to be a major source of breach risk for UK firms. Back in June, a Risk Ledger study reported that nearly half (46%) of organizations experienced at least two cybersecurity incidents in their supply chain over the previous year.
In June 2024, a SecurityScorecard report claimed that nearly all (97%) of the FTSE 100 had suffered a breach in their third-party ecosystem in the previous 12 months.
Publicly disclosed ransomware attacks targeting the retail sector globally increased by 58% in Q2 2025 compared to Q1, according to BlackFog.
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