Worthless extortion demand against Domino's Pizza

Solucom's Gerome Billois says Rex Mundi has tried on several occasions to extort money from companies in return for not publishing stolen data. Image: Solucom

The pizza delivery company told affected French and Belgian clients that its computers had been hacked and that "some passwords" had been taken, giving those behind the attack access to data such as phone numbers and addresses but no bank details.

A hacking group called Rex Mundi tweeted on an account that has since been deleted that it had given the US chain of pizza stores until 18:00 GMT on Monday (17 June) to pay €30,000 into its account in exchange for not publishing the data.

But a spokesman for Domino's Pizza said the US group had not paid the money as it refused to yield to blackmail from any form of criminal organisation. It is not yet known whether the hackers have published the data.

According to Gerome Billois, an expert at IT consultants Solucom, Rex Mundi is not an unknown group of hackers.

"In 2012, they attacked and tried to extort (French cable operator) Numericable, as well as from another unnamed bank in (the south-eastern city of) Nice whose customer data they then published on the Internet," he said.

"But it's quite rare that these cases go public," Billois said.

Loic Guezo, a Strategic Director at IT security company Trend Micro, said it was the first time to his knowledge that hackers had gone public with their ransom demands, adding that this new development was terrifying.

"It's the law of the jungle, we're in the Wild West and consumers are publicly taken hostage," he said.

Source: AFP via I-Net Bridge