Today the internet is abuzz with the latest cyber attack on Zappos which has effected tens of millions of people. In a message posted on its blog site late on Sunday, the company said, “We were recently the victim of a cyber attack by a criminal who gained access to parts of our internal network and systems through one of our servers in Kentucky. We are cooperating with law enforcement to undergo an exhaustive investigation”.
Zappos’s database that got affected had information for about 24 million customers. The information included names, e-mail addresses, billing and shipping addresses, phone numbers, the last four digits of the customer’s credit card number, and the customers cryptographically scrambled password. Zappos claims that full credit card numbers and other payment information was not exposed as a result of the database attack.
Zappos is telling customers to reset their passwords due to this security breach and adds, “We also recommend that you change your password on any other web site where you use the same or a similar password.” Zappos is also temporarily shutting down its phone support and will be handling customer support via email only. The company said the reason for this move is “because our phone systems simply aren’t capable of handling so much volume. (If 5% of our customers call, that would be over 1 million phone calls, most of which would not even make it into our phone system in the first place.)”
This is yet another example of hackers damaging a company’s reputation and putting its users at risk. Any body planning to bomb Facebook?