Marks & Spencer has been directly targeted by a ransomware group calling itself DragonForce, which sent a vulgar and abusive ransom email to CEO Stuart Machin using a compromised employee email address.

The message, laced with offensive language and racist terms, demanded that Machin engage via a darknet portal to negotiate payment. It also claimed that the hackers had encrypted the company's servers and stolen customer data, a claim M&S eventually acknowledged weeks later.

The email, dated 23 April, appears to have been sent from the account of an Indian IT worker employed by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), a long-standing M&S tech partner.

TCS has denied involvement and stated that its systems were not the source of the breach. M&S has remained silent publicly, neither confirming the full scope of the attack nor disclosing whether a ransom was paid.

The cyber attack has caused major disruption, costing M&S an estimated