LONDON: The personal details of up to 2.4 million customers may have been accessed after a division of Carphone Warehouse was hit by a “sophisticated” cyber attack.
The encrypted credit card information of up to 90,000 people may have been accessed during the attack, the mobile phone retailer said on Saturday.
An investigation carried out by the company found that names, addresses, dates of birth and bank details of customers could have been accessed.
A Carphone Warehouse spokesman said the attack was stopped “straight away” after its own systems discovered it on Wednesday afternoon.
Asked when the data breach began, he replied, “The evidence indicates within the last two weeks before Wednesday afternoon.”
Sebastian James, group chief executive of Dixons Carphone, said, “We take the security of customer data extremely seriously, and we are very sorry that people have been affected by this attack on our systems.
We are, of course, informing anyone that may have been affected, and have put in place additional security measures.”
The affected division of Carphone Warehouse operates the websites OneStopPhoneShop.com, e2save.com and Mobiles.co.uk and provides services to iD Mobile, TalkTalk Mobile, Talk Mobile and some Carphone Warehouse customers.
Carphone Warehouse said it was contacting all customers who may have been affected to inform them of the breach and to advise them on how to reduce the risk of further consequences.
The company added that the customer information of Currys and PC World – and the “vast majority” of Carphone Warehouse – is held on separate systems and was not accessed during the attack.
