Century old American Book seller Barnes and Noble have admitted that it has become a victim of cyber attack while resolving a technical glitch related to the access service of Nook e-reader and app service. Sources say that information such as, email addresses and some personal details, along with the transaction history was accessed by the hackers in the recent data breach that could have happened in the first week of October this year.
The New York based bookseller has notified its customers about the data breach and apologized for the data leak. It stated that its IT staff discovered the digital attack on October 10th of this year while resolving a technical issue with e-reading services of Nook.
As of now, there is no evidence that the accessed info of customers has been used by the hackers in other cyber attacks such as password spraying and social engineering. But there is evidence that the hackers got hold of data such as billing address, email address, shipping address, contact details and transaction details on what books were purchased by the customers.
Barnes & Noble have restored some of its services from backups recently and is stated that the other services of BN.com will be up by this weekend. As whole of the customer’s payment details are encrypted and tokenized, access to such details to hackers will be of no use, said BN.
Note- Barnes & Noble (BN) is one of the Fortune 1000 companies that operates with over 614 retail stores in North America. Last year in August, the 1886 founded company was reported to have been acquired by Elliott Management Corporation. BN operates its stores to the comfort of its customers and is touted to be the only store offering Starbucks Coffee serving service to all its privileged customers. The stores are known for having an excellent collection of Magazines, newspapers, DVDs, Graphic Novels, gifts, games and toys along with a retro music collection.
