Walmart said that "external bad actors" were to blame for the slew of racist emails sent using its domain address. Hundreds of Walmart customers received emails from the company with a racial epitaph Monday, raising concerns of a possible major hack.
The company said fake accounts were created to generate emails to its customers. The accounts were used to send emails from the address "help@walmart.com" with the subject line "Welcome to Walmart" followed by a racial slur replacing the customer's name.
Walmart said that its internal systems remained secure and its network was not compromised. The company said it has since been able to stop the emails from being sent.
Walmart did not say exactly how many emails were sent. However, a flurry of posts on social media indicates that hundreds may have received racist emails.
@Walmart i received a very disturbing email from you this am. Please dm me so@i can share said email. — Clare Kennedy (@53clare) May 24, 2021
One user said that she was surprised to wake up to such an offensive email in her inbox. Another posted a screenshot of the offensive email, asking the company why it had sent it in the first place.
"We discovered that an external bad actor created false Walmart accounts with obvious intent to offend our customers. We were shocked and appalled to see these offensive and unacceptable emails. We're looking into our sign-up process to ensure something like this doesn't happen again," Walmart said.
A Walmart representative said the company is currently conducting an investigation to find out who created the fake accounts.
"We're also looking into all available means to hold those responsible accountable," the company's representative said.
The type of scam used by the perpetrators is called spoofing.
The cyberattack is often used by scammers to fool recipients into thinking that the email was legitimately sent by a company, most often a bank or other financial institution. In Walmart's case, the attack was likely not meant to steal people's identity or personal information but more as a smear campaign against the company.
