United Kingdom

Vesuvius, a UK-based molten metal flow engineering company issued an alert on February 6, 2023, which stated it was “currently managing a cyber incident, [which] has involved unauthorized access to our systems.” The London Stock Exchange-listed ceramics manufacturer disclosed in May that the perplexing cyber incident will incur a hefty cost of $4.6 million.

The exact nature of the incident remains shrouded in secrecy, as the company has refrained from providing specific details.

Notably, Vesuvius is the second British industrial ceramics manufacturer to disclose a cyber incident in 2023. In January, Morgan Advanced Materials, a company specializing in semiconductor production, also submitted a cybersecurity incident notice to the London Stock Exchange.

Offsite specialist Caledonian Modular was hit by a catastrophic cyber attack less than two weeks before it sank into administration, a report into the firm’s collapse has revealed. The loss-making firm, which was trying to strike new funding agreements in the days before administration, was also hit by a massive cyber attack on 24 February, 12 days before the administrator was formally appointed on 8 March.

The administrator’s report said the attack “infected its servers and encrypted its data. This reduced the company’s operating capability and would have required significant cost to remedy. It also restricted the information that could be provided to third parties as part of funding negotiations.”

Later, JRL bought Caledonian Modular out of administration and saves the jobs of 200 former workers.

UK travel company Go-Ahead Group has confirmed that it is dealing with an ongoing cyberattack reportedly affecting software used to schedule bus drivers and services.

The issues became more widespread on Monday, affecting several back office systems, including bus services and payroll software. Firm says software used to schedule bus services hit but Thameslink rail operations not affected. Go-Ahead said it was working with IBM to activate backup systems to ensure its bus services can keep running.

The cyber-attack does not affect its rail business, which runs on separate systems and is operating normally in the UK and abroad.

UK manufacturing firm, Morgan Advanced Materials plc said Tuesday it is investigating and managing a “cybersecurity incident after detecting unauthorized activity on its network.”
“Upon becoming aware of the incident, the company immediately launched an investigation, engaged its specialist support services and has implemented its incident response plans,” the company said in a notice filed with the London Stock Exchange.
“Precautionary measures have been taken within its IT infrastructure to contain the incident and actions are being taken to remediate and restore systems,” the company said.

The Global IT system at The Guardian newspaper was hit by a ransomware attack on December 20. Offices are closed to “reduce the strain” on the company’s networks. All workers were told to work remotely until at least January 23.

The first part of the cyber-attack happened in 2014, affecting the Starwood Hotels group, which was acquired by Marriott two years later. But until 2018, when the problem was first noticed, the attacker continued to have access to all affected systems. On that basis, the ICO said Marriott had failed to protect personal data as required by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)

Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) dined Marriott hotel 18.4 Million pounds for the data breach.

Yodel, a UK courier service was hacked forcing systems to shut down. Critical operating systems including delivery tracking, customer service helpline and apps used by drivers were all affected, The Sun reports. Experts at the National Crime Agency were brought in to assist. Experts believed it was a ransomware attack but this has not been confirmed at this time.

A source close to Yodel told The Sun: "It's a complete disaster, the hack has affected every digital part of the business. Nobody is getting a parcel anytime soon."

Britain’s WPP, the world’s biggest advertising agency, said on Tuesday it had been hit by a cyber attack. WPP Plc’s Chief Executive Officer Martin Sorrell, at a Bloomberg event in Davos half a year later stated: "WPP shut down all its systems when it was hacked and communicated internally on an hourly basis", Sorrell said. Several weeks before WPP has hacked, a WannaCry ransomware attack infected more than 300,000 computers across 150 countries. Microsoft Corp. and others responded quickly by providing software updates, including to WPP, but to no avail, Sorrell said. “Those patches couldn’t stop the malware attack that we had in June".

Household products giant Reckitt Benckiser has said last month's malware cyber-attack could lead to a permanent loss of revenue. The attack disrupted manufacturing and ordering systems at the company, whose products include Nurofen and Dettol. Although it had "largely contained" the attack, Reckitt said the disruption meant like-for-like revenue growth in the second quarter would be down 2%. It also said it expected to lose "some further revenue permanently"

Universal Health Services (UHS), one of the largest healthcare services provider shut down systems at healthcare facilities around the U.S. after a cyberattack hit its networks. UHS managed to restore most affected systems and hospital operations systems during late-October. UHS said that the Ryuk ransomware attack had an estimated impact of $67 million. In October 2020, the U.S. government warned of Ryuk ransomware attacks against healthcare industry organizations including hospitals and healthcare providers.