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from the won't-someone-think-of-the-children dept.
VTech, a Chinese company that makes popular electronic toys for kids, had its app store hacked.
An "unauthorized party" accessed customer information in a database for VTech's Learning Lodge app store on November 14, the company said in a statement Friday. The app store lets parents download apps, games, e-books and educational content to VTech toys.
The database contains customer data including name, email address, password, IP address, mailing address and download history. It does not contain credit card information, the company said.
VTech has not said how many customers were affected, but Motherboard, which first reported the hack, said information on nearly 5 million parents and more than 200,000 kids was exposed. The hacked data included kids' first name, gender and birthday, according to Motherboard.
[...] Motherboard was notified of the breach by an unidentified hacker who claimed responsibility. The hacker said he intends to do "nothing" with the data, according to Motherboard. Hackers sometimes break into systems simply to demonstrate that the networks are vulnerable and need to be made more secure.
If the number of exposed accounts reported by Motherboard is accurate, the VTech hack would be among the largest breaches in recent years. In August, hackers published data from more than 30 million accounts that had been set up on adultery website Ashley Madison. The personal information of an estimated 110 million Target customers was stolen in 2013 by malware installed on the retailer's point-of-sale terminals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 30 2015, @10:24PM
Well.. as far as online security is concerned, I have learned it is like calling people fat.
Calling the disease for what it is doesn't seem to get people to start caring about the harm it does to themselves.