Castorama

Castorama is a French home improvement retailer that focuses on providing goods for do‑it‑yourself projects, construction, and gardening. The company offers a variety of products that support renovation, repair, and outdoor activities. It serves customers who buy these items for personal use or professional trade. Sales are conducted through a network of physical stores as well as an online website. The retailer’s headquarters are located in France, reflecting its primary market base. Castorama operates within the competitive European DIY sector alongside other major chains.

In June 2016, Castorama’s website experienced a security incident in which its search function was manipulated to return vulgar and anti‑Semitic suggestions for ordinary product queries. Attackers flooded the search algorithm with profane terms, causing autocomplete results to display offensive language unrelated to the intended merchandise. In response, the company temporarily took the site offline and displayed an unavailable message while it investigated the issue. Castorama characterized the event as search manipulation rather than a full data breach, stating that no customer data was compromised. The incident attracted attention on social media, where users shared screenshots of the altered search results. This episode highlighted the susceptibility of e‑commerce search systems to query‑based poisoning attacks.