Payment technology company NCR reports ransomware attack

The American payment technology company NCR has been hit by a ransomware attack. This affects ‘some of the catering customers’ who use the Aloha cash register system, also in Europe. NCR sees ‘a clear path to recovery’ and payments would not be prevented.

NCR puts in one letter to customers that it concerns a ‘single data center’ that has been out of service since Wednesday due to the attack. This one hits Alohausers, i.e. catering establishments, but it would concern a ‘limited number of secondary Aloha applications’, for ‘some of the catering customers’. NCR does not specify the impact further, nor exactly which services would be out of action. The NCR website notes that NCR also provides services in the areas of payrolling, digital signage, loyalty rewards, email marketing and more.

Despite NCR’s claim that normal payments are not prevented, there are posts stating that this is the case is the case anyway. The attack was discovered on April 13. It is unclear whether NCR will succeed in decrypting the data or whether it will pay the ransom. Security researcher Dominic Alvieri reports that the ransomware gang BlackCat, also known as Alphv, has claimed responsibility for the attack. NCR is now said to be in discussions with BlackCat.

The service disruption affects North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. In Europe, the outage would be limited to online ordering systems, according to a status page.