Carphone Warehouse reveals data breach affecting up to 2.4m customers

[Arthur]

Sources: BBC News, The Next Web

 

Personal details of up to 2.4 million Carphone Warehouse customers may have been accessed in a cyber-attack, the mobile phone retailer says.

 

Up to 90,000 customers may also have had their encrypted credit card details accessed, it said in a statement.

 

While the "vast majority" of Carphone Warehouse customers are unaffected, the breach does concern some of the company's separately managed divisions.

 

The retailer's owner, Dixons Carphone, said it was very sorry for the attack.

 

The affected part of the company operates the OneStopPhoneShop.com, e2save.com and Mobiles.co.uk websites.

 

It also provides services to iD Mobile, TalkTalk Mobile, Talk Mobile and some Carphone Warehouse customers.

 

Sebastian James, chief executive of Dixons Carphone, said: "We are, of course, informing anyone that may have been affected, and have put in place additional security measures.

 

"We take the security of customer data extremely seriously, and we are very sorry that people have been affected by this attack on our systems."

 

The company's investigation found that the data could have included names, addresses, dates of birth and bank details.

 

A Carphone Warehouse spokesman said the attack was stopped "straight away" after it was discovered on Wednesday afternoon.

 

He also said the breach was likely to have occurred at some point "within the last two weeks before Wednesday afternoon".

 

The BBC's Joe Lynam says Carphone Warehouse first became aware of the problem on 5 August.

 

Customer information for Currys and PC World - and the "vast majority" of Carphone Warehouse - is held on separate systems and was not accessed during the attack, the company added.

[MrKJLS]

Maybe Dixons (PCworld Currys/Carphone Warehouse) should upgrade from XP & 2003...

[Jobos]

For my sins I'm with Talkmobile and the email is rather confusing.

 

Dear talkmobile Customer,

I am writing to you as a precaution after we discovered on the 5th August that some of Carphone Warehouses IT systems had been subjected to a sophisticated cyber attack.

 

Up until February 2015, talkmobile's website was operated by Carphone Warehouse on the IT systems that were impacted by the attack. The systems that contain your billing and my account data are managed by talkmobile and have not been breached as part of this attack nor has talkmobiles new website introduced in February this year.

 

We immediately took action to secure these systems and launched a full investigation with a leading cyber security firm to help us understand the impact of this attack. Our investigation is still going on.

 

At this stage, our investigation indicates that some of the data held on our systems has been accessed and this may include some of your personal details, including your name, address, date of birth and bank details.

 

We take the security of your data extremely seriously, and we have put in place additional security measures to prevent further attacks. Nevertheless, we felt it was important to let you know as soon as possible.

 

To reduce the risk of fraudulent activity, we recommend that you consider taking the following steps:

 

• Notifying your bank and credit card company, so that they can monitor activity on your account

• Checking for suspicious or unexpected online or account activity

• Be careful of anyone calling asking for personal information, bank details or passwords

• You can check your credit rating to make sure no one has taken out loan and credit in your name. You can do this by visiting Experian or Equifax

 

 

If you think you have been a victim of fraud you should report it to Action Fraud, the UK's national fraud and internet crime reporting centre, on 0300 123 2040.

If you have any question regarding this email, please visit our website for further useful information.

 

Update | Carphone Warehouse

 

I appreciate that this is potentially concerning for you and I am very sorry that this attack on us has caused this inconvenience.

 

Yours sincerely

Jeremy Fennell

Managing Director Carphone Warehouse