Car dealer 'won't be held hostage' by hackers after ransom demand
Pendragon has refused to pay $60m despite threat to leak sensitive information
The UK’s second-largest car retailer is refusing to pay a ransom demand for $60m (£54m) from dark web hackers, The Times has discovered.
Pendragon, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange and operates the Evans Halshaw, Stratstone and Car Store brands, this morning told the paper that it had been undergoing a cyberattack for a month “by a gang connected to a sophisticated group known as LockBit 3.0”. Security experts had protected the system after 5% of its database had been breached, the dealer claimed.
Representatives of Pendragon have alerted authorities including the National Cyber Security Centre — part of GCHQ — police, information commissioner and Financial Conduct Authority.
The company said it is in daily contact with the gang, which has provided proof of the data breach, though has declined to enter into discussions about payment of the ransom into a bitcoin wallet despite being given a final warning that its information would be leaked onto the dark web today.
“We refuse to be held hostage by this group and we will not be paying a ransom demand,” Kim Costello, the chief marketing officer, said.
Clients of Pendragon including Aston Martin, BMW, Ferrari, Porsche, Jaguar Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz were informed about the breach this morning, and the group’s 4,000 staff were notified by email.
Lockbit has been linked to an ongoing hack of the Kingfisher insurance group along with cyberattacks on businesses in Japan and France, as well as on Ukrainian infrastructure following the invasion by Russia in February. However it claimed to be an apological multinational community for whom hacking “is just business”.
It added: “We are only interested in money for our harmless and useful work.”
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