Hackers accessed thousands of data during the Forever 21 breach

The well-known clothing and accessories retailing company Forever 21 has confirmed a data breach incident on its system after rolling out notification letters to thousands of people potentially compromised by the campaign.

Based on reports, there are 500,000 individuals whose personal information was exposed after the hackers infiltrated the company. The company runs more than 500 outlets globally and is home to about 43,000 employees.

 

Forever 21 reported that the breach occurred earlier this year.

 

Forever 21 stated in their breach notification letter to the Office of the Maine Attorney General that they detected the cyberattack on their systems last March.

The initial investigation revealed that the attackers acquired access to the company’s systems from January to March and used that time to harvest data. Findings from the initial analysis claimed that the unauthorised access obtained select files from several systems during the breach.

The data breach notification letters reached the potentially impacted people late last month. The total number of individuals that may have suffered data exposure is 539,207.

The confirmed data that the threat actors may have accessed during the breach are full names, dates of birth, Social Security Numbers (SSNs), bank account numbers, and Forever 21 health plan details.

Forever 21 has yet to reveal other details about the incident. Various individuals could have suffered from the hack, like customers, employees, and other relevant people to the company.

However, the company assured everyone they had taken safety measures to ensure the threat actors had deleted the stolen information. This detail indicates that the company has transacted with the attackers.

The transaction could mean that the incident is a ransomware attack since common victims of such campaigns negotiate to stop the hackers from exposing the stolen data. Unfortunately, the company has not confirmed the nature of the attack.

The firm assures everyone that the threat actors have not shared the stolen data with other cybercriminals, making the incident low risk. People who received the notification letters could apply for the company’s free 12-month fraud and identity theft subscription.

Cybersecurity experts claimed that the affected individuals should not be too confident about the news since the threat actors could still execute malicious campaigns such as phishing campaigns.