Networks Solutions Security Breach effects 600,000
August 31st, 2009
Network Solutions Security Breach
Network Solutions has recently experienced a security breach which has led to the theft of over a half of a million peoples credit card data. The data was breached by the websites people use for purchases hosted by the company. The accounts that were affected belonged to its customers of e-commerce merchants.
Here is a quick overview
1. On July 24, 2009 Network Solutions notified over 4300 of its 10,000 ecommerce merchants about the breach.
2. The breach effects 573,938 of its cardholders whose credit card numbers, addresses and names were exposed between March 12th and June 8th.
3. Susan Wade, a spokeswoman for Network solutions, said a mysterious code was found on servers hosting e-commerce client’s sites during routine maintenance in June and is unknown how the code got into the system.
4. Networks Solutions other breaches which include email hosting, online marketing, and domain registration were not affected by the breach.
On July 13th Network Solutions brought in a forensics company to help investigate. The company cracked part of the code determining that it could be related to credit card data, Wade said. Wade also stated “So we notified law enforcement and began the process of notifying our customers,” Wade said. “At this point, we don’t have a reason to believe that (the data) has been used, but we are working with the credit card companies,” nonetheless.
Network Solutions is PCI complaint and Wade had also had this to say: “We store credit card data in an encrypted manner, and we are PCI (Payment Card Industry)-compliant. Unfortunately, any company operating in our business could have become a victim of this type of invasion,” the company said on a blog post on the customer information Web site. “In this situation, the unauthorized code appears to have transmitted information about credit card transactions as they were being completed; it did not involve a vulnerability in the way we store data in our systems.”
This incident is the second invasion this year Network Solutions has experienced and is the largest security breach since the Heartland payment systems security breach. Network Solutions does feel “terribly bad about this” according to Wade so affected customers will get twelve months free of credit monitoring services from the company.
