Arnold Clark threatened by hackers following cyber attack

Arnold Clark is being reportedly ransomed by international hacking ring Play.

This follows the cyber attack on the company over the festive period, in which customers had their addresses, passports and national insurance numbers stolen and have now, the Mail on Sunday has reported, been leaked on the dark web.

The newspaper reported that hackers have posted 15GB of data, and have threatened to upload a further 467GB unless a multi-million-pound ransom is paid in cryptocurrency.

Arnold Clark previously confirmed that it was hit by a cyber attack late on the evening of 23rd December.

The attack resulted in the Group bringing down its network voluntarily as a protective measure, which resulted in cutting connectivity to the internet, dealerships and its third-party connections.

The Group took to LinkedIn to explained the situation. It said: “Our priority has been to protect our customers’ data, our systems and our third-party partners. While this has been achieved, this action has caused temporary disruption to our business and unfortunately our customers.

“Our external security partners have now been performing an extensive review of our whole IT network and infrastructure, which is a mammoth task, and they are providing guidance to our IT team on the re-enabling of our network and systems in a safe, secure and phased manner.”