Ransomware Hack Said to Be Cause of Marks & Spencer Outages

A ransomware attack is the cause of a disruption at Marks & Spencer Group Plc., with hackers using a potent kind of malware to lock down some of the British retailer’s systems and render them inaccessible, according to people familiar with the attack.

The company has for more than a week attempted to recover from what it’s called a “cyber incident,” pausing online orders and stopping processing some payments in its stores across the UK. A group of suspected cybercriminals hit the company with a kind of ransomware known as DragonForce, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to share information about the investigation.