Carphone Warehouse has announced today that sometime over the last two weeks (the attack was discovered on Wednesday the 5th of August), that they have been the target of a "sophisticated" cyber attack in which around 2.4 million customer's details have been stolen.
Personal information slurped from the Carphone Warehouse group includes bank details, names, addresses and dates of birth and email addresses - Pretty much all the data that criminals want the most. In addition, up to 90,000 customer's credit card details are also likely to have been accessed.
This cyber attack will be a big shock to Carphone Warehouse customers, and with the information obtained in the attack customers have every right to be very worried.
The news is being reported in the press quite widely now. Here is my pick from The Independent.
What seems to be glossed over is that this is a Carphone Warehouse problem. In fact, it is affecting the Dixons Carphone group, who operate under several different brands: e2save, mobiles.co.uk and OneStopPhoneShop.com - At this point it is possible that customers of these brands are also affected, as they come under the Carphone Warehouse umbrella.
Dixons Carphone also provide services to the following networks: iD Mobile, Talkmobile and Talk Talk Mobile. It is not clear if these websites have also been affected by this attack. Though, I found and reported that the iD Mobile website was down yesterday, but this could be pure coincidence. The Talk Talk Mobile website is currently down as I write this entry.
Are you a concerned customer? You're not alone and Carphone Warehouse say that they will contact affected customers by email soon.
This is a very worrying attack, given the scale and type of information accessed, but it won't be the last. Crime still pays, and unfortunately the more information that companies put into electronic formats, the more valuable and likely it is that criminals will target it - and succeed in exploiting it.
