Rental car company Sixt confirms cyber attack, leaves scores of UK customers in the dark

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Major rental car corporation Sixt has confirmed a cyber attack that has affected its functions and reportedly triggered a amount of branches to choose bookings using pen and paper.

Sixt explained the attack begun on Friday 29 April and “was equipped to incorporate [it] at an early stage”, however customer reviews continue to recommend that the enterprise is battling to recuperate entirely.

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Because the attack took hold, UK shoppers have been not able to speak to the business by using email or phone and some have been left without having roadside assistance just after rented cars and trucks have damaged down.

Requesting enable from contacts. Immediately after some charming days in Outer Hebrides, our @SixtUK hir car or truck has broken down. 24hrs later on @SixtUK continue to entirely uncontactable. Be sure to retweet if you can so I can set sone strain on them! Uist with no a car is no exciting 😭

— Matt Kendo (@MatthewKendo29) May well 1, 2022

Employed a van from @SixtUK and it has now damaged down. None of their phone traces are working and no response to our emails, because yesterday. This is past terrible provider.

— Fish Farmer Magazine (@fishfarmermag) May possibly 3, 2022

IT Pro experimented with to contact Sixt for a reaction but did not receive a reply by using email. Phone traces connecting to its Germany head office appeared to be disconnected or malfunctioning and UK phone traces were being related but rang out.

The business has not verified what sort of cyber attack it has suffered but has begun an investigation with both equally “internal and exterior experts”, it mentioned in an announcement.

“As a common precautionary measure, accessibility to IT devices was immediately restricted and the pre-planned restoration processes had been initiated,” Sixt mentioned on Sunday. “Many central Sixt systems, in individual the website and apps, have been stored up and working. 

“Thereby, impacts on the company, its operations and providers have been minimised to supply company continuity for customers. Nonetheless, short term disruptions, in distinct in consumer care centres and selective branches, are likely to happen in the small phrase.”

In accordance to purchaser studies, the enterprise has been unresponsive for a variety of days, like on social media, and nearby media reports in Germany indicated that branches resorted to applying pen and paper to just take bookings on Friday.

The only Sixt-affiliated Twitter account responding to person queries linked to assistance outages is the Netherlands-centered account with other people acquiring not Tweeted because before the cyber attack.

Sixt is one particular of the most significant rental motor vehicle corporations in the planet, operating much more than 240,000 cars throughout far more than 400 towns in 50 international locations around the world.