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Dell was the target of an attack to steal customer information

By Koh Wanzi - on 30 Nov 2018, 3:14pm

Dell was the target of an attack to steal customer information

Image Source: Dell

Dell says that it may have been the target of an attempt to steal customer information. In a customer update released on its website, the company acknowledged the possible incursion on 9 November, but it’s not clear how successful the effort was.

According to Dell, it noticed and responded to “unauthorized activity” on its network, where the hackers tried to filch customer names, email addresses, and hashed, or masked, passwords. However, credit card and other sensitive information was not affected.

Dell says in the update that it has found no proof that the hackers made off with any information, but in a separate press release, it appeared to hedge its bets a little, saying that “Though it is possible some of this information was removed from Dell’s network, our investigations found no conclusive evidence that any was extracted”.

In other words, you should bear in mind that a failure to find evidence does not necessarily mean that the evidence doesn’t exist.

Dell also hired a digital forensics firm to perform an independent investigation and notified the relevant authorities. However, the company declined to say how many accounts were affected by the attack.

As a precautionary measure, Dell has reset all customer passwords. But if you really want to play it safe, you should also change the passwords to other services that use the same or similar credentials.

Source: Dell (1), (2)

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