A Hacker Attacked Hardware Zone Forum, and 685,000 User’s Data were Stolen

HWZ was conformed about a serious data breach on Sunday exactly after a suspicious posting was found on a renowned tech forum website, SPH magazine is the owner of the website. In a news released in press on Wednesday 21st February, the publisher of the magazine said, account of a senior moderator has been breached by an unknown hacker and utilized to access around 685,000 enlisted user's profiles since Sept. 2017.

An attacker fetched the profile data of the user which includes their names, email id, user identifications and probable alternative data fields for example the date of birth of the user, including education and messaging app's username.

As an issue of precautionary measure, the users of the forum were asked to change their account password of the forum. SPH Magazines has involved security consultant also to perform a thorough audit of the concerned system. A police complaint has also been lodged as per the upload on news.yahoo.com dated 21/02/2018.

The announcement included: "SPH Magazines as well as HWZ earnestly apologize to the users of HWZ for this serious security breach that took place on Sunday. We stay focused on ensuring every personal data imparted to us."

An inspection was immediately propelled after the breakout of the news and it was discovered that the security breach had actually happened since last year September, when the unknown culprits hacked the profile of the users and used all the credentials to imitate the forum's senior moderator.

SPH Magazines release the news of the police complaint had been done and is also informed to PDPC about the matter. On yesterday news release, SPH magazines stated that the IC number, phone numbers and the addresses was not available in the database as these were erased in the month of July 2015, in accordance with PDPC rulesIt has involved with security consultants to audit the system.

It included that the NRIC numbers and details of the contacts were not available in the data base as these types of personal details were removed as per the guidelines by PDPC (Personal Data Protection Commission) in July 2015.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/28/2018