http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/18328.html
By: John Leyden
Posted: 17/04/2001 at 17:57 GMT
Customers of computer components supplier Accubyte have been
encouraged to check their credit card records for fraudulent misuse
after it admitted that its previously lax security left confidential
information exposed.
The problem came to light after an email sent to what is said to be
250 Accubyte customers was forwarded to The Register.
According to the email, poor programming involving the site's shopping
cart software resulted in an email confirmation of orders - which
contained credit card information, names and addresses - to be
transmitted over the Internet in a clear text message.
This left confidential information exposed, and the sender of the
warning email claims to have broken into an email account where he
recovered "a file listing of all of our names, home address, phone
numbers, email and credit card details".
After becoming a victim of fraud, he decided to send a warning to
others using the email list he obtained from the account
(router@arabchat.org).
A sales rep for Illinois-based Accubyte confirmed that there was a
security issue with the confirmation email it sent out following
orders, which he said contained order and "credit card details".
He said the system was changed three weeks ago so that customers would
be asked to log into a server to receive order confirmations - which
he stated meant the site was now fully secure.
When we asked him how many Accubyte customers were affected by the
earlier problem, how many people had complained or what the site was
doing to address any fraud that might have been committed he became
increasingly keen to get off the phone.
We hope his advice that Accubyte customers' should "call their credit
card firm and dispute any charges they think are fraudulent", is not
the official line.
The hardware retailer should be doing rather more than this to help
its customers. Incidentally, Accubyte's motto is: "If we don't take
care of you, someone else will!" Quite.
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Received on Wed Apr 18 01:12 CDT 2001