Thousands of Aussies potentially caught up in data breach at popular online fashion company ASOS
A British online fashion giant known for its popularity with Aussies has confirmed it has suffered a data breach, with ‘basic personal information’ being compromised.
ASOS confirmed hackers may have accessed the information after customers received a mobile notification at about 8pm AEST on Tuesday threatening to leak data.
‘Dear ASOS DPO and IT, we have fully compromised the Snowflake instance. Engage with us, or we will leak it,’ the notification read.
Snowflake is a cloud-based data platform which allows businesses to store data, while an ‘instance’ is a dedicated private environment for a company, housing its data, operations and internal processes independently from other businesses.
In a statement issued after the ‘unauthorised’ notification was sent, ASOS said that it did not believe ‘payment card details or passwords were impacted’.
‘We took immediate action to restrict access to the notification platforms and are working with our internal and external specialist advisers as well as all relevant authorities,’ it said.
The number of Aussie customers affected is not known at this stage, but the breach could have significant implications for ASOS, which has more than 16 million active customers worldwide and counts Australia among its largest overseas markets.
Many Aussies weren’t sure what the notification meant while others said they would boycott the company.
A British online fashion giant known for its popularity with Aussies has confirmed it has suffered a data breach, with ‘basic personal information’ being compromised
ASOS confirmed hackers may have assessed the information after customers received a mobile notification at about 8pm AEST seemingly threatening to leak their data
‘Took me a minute to realise that ‘ASOS HACKED’ wasn’t just some new campaign they were running,’ one said.
‘Pretty sick of these big companies not keeping customers data secure and then when there is a breach, failing to notify customers. I won’t be shopping with ASOS again,’ a second said.
Despite the worrying developments, customers were able to continue using the retailer’s website and app as normal.
‘Customer trust is incredibly important to us, and if the situation changes, an update will be provided as appropriate,’ an ASOS spokesman said.
More to come.
