Massive Ahold Delhaize data breach sees 2.2 million people's data exposed in ransomware attacks against major US food retailer

Fake hacker keyboard. — (Image credit: Getty Images - Peter Dazeley)

A heads up for readers in the U.S. if you haven't changed your passwords since last November, you might just want to get on that. One of the most common ways hackers can gain access to your accounts is by data breaches, where a website's private data including usernames and passwords become public. Once out, this information will be used to attempt to hack other services, so it's always smart to update passwords after breaches like the one that happened to Ahold Delhaize.

As BleepingComputer reports, Ahold Delhaize is one of the biggest food retailers in the world, doing most of its business in Europe, Indonesia, and the United States. Across its ventures, the company employs nearly 400,000 people across almost 10,000 stores. This is all to service the 60 million customers per week, all of whom should really change their passwords.

On Thursday Ahold Delhaize had a filing with Maine's attorney general where it was revealed that 2,242,521 individuals had their data compromised in the breach. The company isn't clear on exactly what kind of data was stolen, but it could be more than just account names and passwords. Personal information like names, addresses, birthdays, id numbers, bank accounts, health information, and more could be up for grabs.

"It’s important to note that based on our investigation, we have no indication that customer payment or pharmacy systems were compromised in connection with the issue, and the company identified no customer credit card numbers contained in the affected files. Beyond this, we are not providing any additional details on the systems affected," a spokesperson told BleepingComputer.

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Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.

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