Massive data breach could lead to attacks

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Millions of customers’ names and email addresses have been compromised in one of the world’s largest data breaches. Epsilon an international email marketing firm contacted their clients which include 150 banks world wide as well as other organisations like Marks & Spencer’s, Abe Books, Barclay’s Bank, Walt Disney, Ritz-Carlton, JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Target and Walgreens to inform them that a data breach had led to thousands of customers’ information to be accessed and stolen. Epsilon is a subsidiary of Alliance Data and have approximately 2,500 clients, they also send over 40 billion emails a year on behalf of said clients.

Jessica Simon a spokesperson for Epsilon declined to comment but reiterated Epsilon’s previous statement saying, “on March 30th, an incident was detected where a subset* of Epsilon clients’ customer data were exposed by an unauthorized entry into Epsilon’s email system. The information that was obtained was limited to email addresses and/or customer names only. A rigorous assessment determined that no other personal identifiable information associated with those names was at risk. A full investigation is currently underway.” Epsilon estimate that this subset is an approximate 2% of clients.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG), a body that tries to prevent internet crime reported 33,000 phishing attacks worldwide last year. They fear that the number could rise dramatically this year due to the data breach.

Customers of the various organisations were notified by email that their details had been compromised and that they should be wary of phishing and spear phishing attacks in the future. Abe books emailed their customers earlier this week to explain that “an unauthorised person outside their [Epsilon] company accessed files that included email addresses of some of AbeBooks’ customers.”The Guardian has reported that the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) were making inquiries regarding whether any Britons had been affected by the breach.

The attack follows a history of major data breaches in recent years, most notably the Heartland Payment Systems breach in 2008, where more than 40million bank details were stolen in an attack.

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