Many companies have fallen victim to data breaches. Samsung has recently become one of the most recent companies to have a data breach. Thankfully, for U.S. customers, the data breach was not as large as it could have been. On Friday, September 2, the company confirmed that they indeed suffered a data breach, but that they have since secured their systems.
Samsung’s Security Response Center page goes more into detail about the breach. A hacker broke into Samsung’s U.S data servers and the hacker was successfully able to break into their servers in late July. Samsung found out about the breach in late August and decided to fix the affected systems, hire a “leading outside cybersecurity firm” and get into contact with law enforcement.
The data that was taken was reassured, by Samsung, that the breach did not directly impact credit card numbers, but in some cases, it may have affected information, such as date of birth, name, contact and demographic information, and product registration information. Some of the contact information will consist of phone numbers and emails, but the registration information will cover whichever Samsung devices you have registered with a Samsung account.
Any Samsung customers that were affected by the data breach, or as Samsung says, “identified as affected by this issue,” should have already received an email from the company. Samsung also assures us that “consumer devices were not compromised in connection with this incident,” That being said, the hacker wouldn’t have been able to get access to location data or other sensitive information.
As to anyone who did receive Samsung’s warning email, they should “remain cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information.” It is a possibility that the hacker could potentially use the stolen personal information for phishing attempts against them.
Cash App, a money transfer service, announced in April that one of its former employees was able to gain access to millions of users’ personal data. An unspecified quantity of users’ personal information, such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and partial credit card numbers, as well as internal tools used by delivery drivers, were taken by hackers in August, according to the food delivery service Door Dash. After its verification app Twilio was compromised, even Signal, one of the most secure mobile messaging services, addressed a cybersecurity risk.
In other phone business news, T-Mobile finally disclosed the specifics of a class action settlement relating to a user data breach that occurred in August 2021; customers who were affected were able to receive $5. Beetle Eye, a U.S. marketing platform, had a data breach that leaked over 1 gigabyte of stolen data that contained 6K files and affected approximately 7 million people. The company mistakenly left its Amazon S3 bucket open, exposing data. The exposed data contains personally identifiable information. The information in question relates to the “leads” of the businesses utilizing the marketing automation platform of Beetle Eye. In other words, the leaked data most likely pertains to future Beetle Eye clients’ customers.
Samsung has dealt with such a breach before, and it isn’t even the first one of 2022. The tech company revealed that internal company data affecting Galaxy smartphones had been exposed by hackers in March. “We do not now foresee any effects on our business or clients. The business stated. “We have taken steps to stop similar occurrences from happening again, and we’ll keep providing our consumers with unhindered service.”
Written by Lance Santoyo
Edited by Sheena Robertson
Sources:
Android Central: Samsung’s US customer data hacked: Here’s what info was taken; by Michael L. Hicks
How To Geek: Samsung Just Had a Data Breach; by Corbin Davenport
CNET: Samsung Customer Information Stolen in Data Breach; by Bree Fowler
GSM Arena: Samsung notifies affected customers of a July security breach; by Enrique
Sam Mobile: Samsung says some US customers had their data leaked in recent incident; by Adnan Farooqui
Mashable: Samsung customers: your data may have been breached; by Chase Dibenedetto
Website Planet: Report: US Marketing Platform Exposed Millions of Leads’ Data
Featured Image Courtesy of Marufish’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of John Karakatsanis’ Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
