Hacking Scottrade, Stealing Personal Information of 4.6 Million Customers
Today, a popular investment firm Scottrade announced the leakage of data, from which affected approximately 4.6 million of its customers. Any customer with an existing Scottrade account prior to February 2014 could have contact information and social security numbers taken from them.
The data breach occurred in the months from late 2013 to early 2014, according to Scottrade . They believe that the data accessed includes customer names, addresses and other personal information. Customers’ social security numbers may have been available as well, but they can’t say for sure yet. No client funds or the trading platform itself were touched or available. All customer passwords were encrypted and so far there have been no signs of fraud.
Scottrade notes that contact information was at the center of the hack, and Brian Krebs of the KrebsOnSecurity blog suggests that attackers are likely to use this information to facilitate stock scams. This probably just means more spam for Scottrade customers, but hopefully nothing more. However, if you believe you have been affected by this data breach, Scottrade offers a one-year free credit monitoring service. Just call AllClear ID at (855) 229-0083. We’ll update this post if and when we get more information.
Cybersecurity Update | Scottrade via KrebsOnSecurity