UK supermarket‘s website and app were offline for a while on Saturday, which prevented customers from ordering and cancelling their orders.
Reportedly, a hacker attack on Tesco’s systems resulted in the site’s search function going offline. Tesco said: “an attempt was made to interfere with our systems, which caused problems with the search function on the site.”
Tesco had tweeted later on Saturday: “We’re experiencing an issue with our website and app and are working hard to get things back up and running. We apologise for any inconvenience.”
It said it did not believe that the incident affected its customers’ data.
“There is no reason to believe that this issue impacts customer data and we continue to take ongoing action to make sure all data stays safe.”
The company, which does almost 15% of its UK sales online, did not provide further details of the incident.
It was revealed on Sunday that Tesco’s site and app were back online, but the company had to use a virtual waiting room to handle the influx of orders.
“Our groceries website and app are back up and running. To help us manage the high volume we’re temporarily using a virtual waiting room. We’re really sorry for any inconvenience and thank you for your patience,” Tesco said on Twitter.
Tesco is not new to hacker attacks. Previously, Tesco’s bank was hit with a fine of £16.4m by the UK’s financial watchdog over a 2016 incident where hackers stole £2.26m from 9,000 customers. The watchdog found multiple flaws in the way the bank handled payment data.
Tesco was also hacked in 2014, when more than 2,000 login details, including passwords, were posted online; Tesco was forced to deactivate online customer accounts back then.
After the most recent hack, customers complained about how Tesco handled the cancellation of their orders. They reported receiving confusing instructions from the company, and thus were unable to change or cancel their orders or access them through the website.
The FBI warned that the agriculture and food sectors were becoming the target of increasingly sophisticated attacks designed to disrupt the supply chain.
