Tag Archive for: Scottrade

Dow Jones & Co. discloses breach, incident likely related to Scottrade

On Friday, in a letter to customers, the CEO of Dow Jones & Co. disclosed a data breach affecting 3,500 people. Based on public details, the incident seems similar to a breach reported by Scottrade last week that impacted 4.6 million investors.

In his letter, Dow Jones Chief Executive William Lewis said that law enforcement officials informed the company about the potential breach in late July.

After bringing in outside help, an investigation turned up a confirmation that the systems housing the customer data was accessed – but there is no proof that data was exfiltrated. The investigators also determined that the attackers had access to the system between August 2012 and July 2015.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network World Security

Scottrade breach exposes sensitive data for 4.6 million customers

On the heels of hacks hitting artist funding site Patreon and a database of 15 million people who applied for T-Mobile accounts comes word that online stock brokerage Scottrade has suffered a breach that exposed the personal information of 4.6 million customers.

Scottrade officials said in an online advisory that the breach happened in late 2013 or early 2014 and exposed social security numbers, e-mail addresses and “other sensitive information,” whatever that may be. While all that data was available for the taking, the advisory said the attackers appeared to target client names and street addresses. The notice never made it clear if password data was also accessed, but unhelpfully, the officials said, “Client passwords remained fully encrypted at all times and we have not seen any indication of fraudulent activity as a result of this incident.”

Remarkably, the officials leave it up to customers to decide whether they should change passwords. Out of an abundance of caution, Ars recommends that all Scottrade users change their passcodes ASAP, both on the brokerage site and any other sites that may have used the same credentials. The officials said they learned of the breach after receiving information from federal law enforcement investigators. Scottrade is offering a year of free identity protection services to all 4.6 million people whose details were included in the compromised database.

Read on Ars Technica | Comments

Ars Technica » Technology Lab

Scottrade had no idea about data breach until the feds showed up

When an organization gets hacked, ideally they’ll realize it promptly and warn their users right away. Take crowdfunding site Patreon, which was hacked on Monday and has already informed the world about the problem. Scottrade, an investment brokerage company, is different, and not in a good way.

The company announced Friday that it suffered a security breach over a period of several months from late 2013 to early 2014, affecting approximately 4.6 million customers. But in a statement, Scottrade said it had no idea that the breach had occurred until law enforcement officials told them about it.

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Network World Security