eBay’s going to have to beef up its cyber security, as the e-commerce site says that hackers have gotten hold of employee login information, giving them access to customer addresses, emails, birthdays and phone numbers. The breach reached about 145 million people, who have all been instructed to change their passwords. The attack is said to have happened between late February and early March, having only been discovered this month.
eBay claims that in spite of the breach, no unauthorized purchases were made. As they said in a statement, “After conducting extensive tests on its networks, the company said it has no evidence of the compromise resulting in unauthorized activity for eBay users, and no evidence of any unauthorized access to financial or credit card information, which is stored separately in encrypted formats. However, changing passwords is a best practice and will help enhance security for eBay users.”
Though no one has allegedly experienced such activity, it is still quite alarming how easy it is for hackers, who are often just internet trolls, to get hold of sensitive information. Perhaps the people behind the breach were looking to show their prowess, that if they wanted to, they could wreak the sort of havoc on the site and its customers that could ultimately cause distrust between the consumer and eBay.
[via WWD]
