An abusive email sent by the Marks & Spencer hackers to the retailer's boss gloating about the hack and demanding payment has been seen by the BBC.
The message to M&S CEO Stuart Machin - which was in broken English - was sent on the 23 April from the hacker group called DragonForce using the email account of an employee.
The email confirms for the first time that M&S has been hacked by the ransomware group – something that M&S has so far refused to acknowledge.
"We have marched the ways from China all the way to the UK and have mercilessly raped your company and encrypted all the servers," the hackers wrote.
"The dragon wants to speak to you so please head over to [our darknet website]."
