Coca-Cola investigating data breach claims

Coca-Cola has launched an investigation into the claims of the Stormous ransomware group this week that it had infiltrated some of the beverage corporation's servers, resulting in the theft of 161GB of data, reports The Register. After its emergence early this year, the Stormous operation has expressed support for Russia amid the country's invasion of Ukraine and threatened to launch attacks against organizations around the world that threaten to compromise Russian infrastructure, immediately after the same Russian support was expressed by the Conti ransomware group. While Coca-Cola suspended Russian operations and pledged $14.8 million for relief initiatives in Ukraine, Stormous denied that the attack on the company was done to retaliate against the company's support for Ukraine. Aside from Stormous and Conti, numerous ransomware operations have also been taking sides, with Accenture's Cyber Threat Intelligence team noting that the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine marks the first instance of ideological division between financially motivated threat actors. "Pro-Russian actors are increasingly aligning with hacktivist-like activity targeting 'enemies of Russia,' especially Western entities due to their claims of Western warmongering," said researchers.