Supermarket giant Tesco has confirmed that services across its online store have been restored following the disruption caused by a hacking attempt over the weekend.
“Our online grocery website and app are now back up and running,” Tesco announced via Twitter. “To help us manage the high volume [of traffic], we’re temporarily using a virtual waiting room.”
A spokesperson later told Reuters that the supermarket chain’s “teams have worked around the clock to restore service and we’re really sorry to our customers for the inconvenience caused.”
The outage began on Saturday morning but continued into the next day, leaving thousands of frustrated shoppers unable to book deliveries or amend existing orders. Tesco receives about 1.3 million online orders every week, according to the Guardian.
“Since yesterday, we’ve been experiencing disruption to our online grocery website and app,” the spokesperson said on Sunday. “An attempt was made to interfere with our systems which has caused problems with the search function on the site.”
The spokesperson added that there was “no reason to believe” that customer data had been compromised and that Tesco was taking “ongoing action” to make sure all client information stayed safe.
This is not the first time the retail giant has experienced a cyberattack, the Guardian reported. In 2014, Tesco was forced to deactivate online customer accounts after the login details, including passwords, of more than 2,000 customers were posted online. A separate attack on its banking arm in 2016, meanwhile, cost the company about £2.5 million in losses.
