Epson Korea hack impacts 350,000 customers

Filed Under: Data loss, Privacy, Vulnerability

EPSONEpson Korea has been hit by a massive data breach, involving the personal information of 350,000 registered customers.

Hackers broke into Epson Korea's computer systems, and stole information including passwords, phone numbers, names, and email addresses of customers who had registered with the company.

A warning message was posted to the Epson Korea website, and computer users who believe that may have been affected are advised to change their passwords as soon as possible.

Warning on Epson Korea website

Although you may not care very much if someone can log into your account at Epson, you certainly will care if they can also use the same password to access your other online accounts. Once again, we find ourselves having to reminder users to get into the habit of using different passwords for different websites.

Malicious hackers could clearly use the information they have stolen in targeted attacks against Epson customers, including spammed-out malware attacks (perhaps posing as driver updates for Epson products) or phishing campaigns. The fact that the hackers have their hands on other personal information belonging to Epson's customers can make any such attack all the more believable.

The Epson data breach is the latest in a series of hard-hitting attacks to have struck South Korean internet users in recent months, the most notable being when a staggering 35 million social networking users had their personal information stolen last month.

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About the author

Graham Cluley has worked in the computer security industry for more than 20 years, developing anti-virus software and doing quite a lot of talking about internet threats. He's won awards for his blogging, but is proudest of the text adventure games he wrote when he was still wearing short trousers. You can learn more about those (the games, not the trousers) at grahamcluley.com. Send Graham an email, subscribe to his updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and App.net, and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.