LivingSocial hack results in 50 million compromised user accounts

LivingSocial, the daily deals site partially owned by Amazon, disclosed Friday that they had suffered a serious cyber attack.

CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy sent an email to his employees to admit the resulting “unauthorized access to some customer data” and that they were “actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.”

A spokesperson said that the company has started contacting some 50 million plus customers whose information may have been compromised by the breach. While customers’ and merchants’ credit card and financial information were not reached by hackers, names, e-mail addresses, birthdates and encrypted passwords were all leaked.

The Washington, D.C.-based company shared with Mashable the bad news e-mail they sent to customers:

customeremail

Users of LivingSocial all across the globe have been affected and will now be required to reset their passwords, aside from customers in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Phillipines, which were not harmed by the breach.

Recently, other high profile companies like LinkedIn and Zappos have also suffered major data breaches.

No matter the size of your company, making sure that you have the right security team to protect your data is of utmost importance. If you are looking to fill a senior-level security position, ask us to find out more about our Executive Search options.

 

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