It's crunch time for crisps fans as snacks giant KP has told shops to brace themselves for a shortage of treats.
Deliveries to stores could be delayed until the end of March at the earliest after the company was hit by a ransomware attack, according to industry website Better Retailing.
The trade site published messages that had been sent to local shops from KP Snacks, which has factories in Tanfield, Stanley, and Billingham, Teesside.
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Popular snacks that could be in short supply as a result of the attack include McCoys’s crisps, Hula Hoops, Tyrell’s, Space Raiders, Skips, Butterkist, Pom-Bears, Nik-Naks and KP Nuts themselves.
"At this stage we cannot safely process orders or dispatch goods," the letter from KP Snacks explained to retailers, after confirming to The Mirror that the ransomware attack had been discovered on January 28.
KP Snacks said: "As soon as we became aware of the incident, we enacted our cybersecurity response plan and engaged a leading forensic information technology firm and legal counsel to assist us in our investigation.
"Our internal IT teams continue to work with third-party experts to assess the situation.
"We have been continuing to keep our colleagues, customers, and suppliers informed of any developments and apologise for any disruption this may have caused."
Ransomware gains access to a computer the same way as any kind of virus or computer worm - either through getting the user to open an infected email, navigate to a compromised website or install an infected program.
Once inside a computer it can work in a several different ways. One of these is to bombard users with adverts, indecent images or bogus warnings until they pay to have them removed.
Alternatively, it can lock users out of one or more parts of their PC until they pay to have access restored. Sometimes it does this by mimicking an official warning from a government agency or police force.
Finally, personal or important files can be removed from the host PC as part of an attack, with the information then encrypted and threatened with deletion.
Victims are often given a time limit within which to pay and ransoms can vary in price from tens to hundreds of pounds.
The head of the UK spy agency GCHQ disclosed last year that the number of ransomware attacks on British institutions has doubled in the past year.
Jeremy Fleming, the director of GCHQ, said locking files and data on a user’s computer and demanding payment for their release had become increasingly popular among criminals because it was “largely uncontested” and highly profitable.
