Security

Monster Attacked, Security Breached, User Data Stolen

Friday, August 24th, 2007 | Internet News, Security | 1 Comment

US job website Monster.com has suffered an online attack with the personal data of hundreds of thousands of users stolen, says a security firm.

monster
A computer program was used to access the employers’ section of website using stolen log-in credentials.

Symantec said the log-ins were used to harvest user names, e-mail addresses, home addresses and phone numbers, which were uploaded to a remote web server.

Symantec said it had seen reports of phishing e-mails sent out to Monster.com users which were “very realistic, containing personal information of the victims”.

The e-mail encouraged users to download a Monster Job Seeker Tool, which was in fact a program that encrypted files in their computer and left a ransom note demanding money for their decryption.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is not a hack of Monster’s security, rather, legitimate customer credentials are being used to log in to the database,” said Patrick W. Manzo, vice president of compliance and fraud prevention at Monster.

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