Dow Jones & Co reveals hack exposing 3,500 individuals’ card information

12 Oct 2015

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Dow Jones & Co, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, revealed yesterday that it had been hit by a hack that might have exposed credit and debit card information of "fewer than 3,500 individuals."

Dow Jones CEO William Lewis wrote a letter to customers informing about the breach.

The unauthorised access apparently happened between August 2012 and July 2015, but there was no "direct evidence" yet that customer information was actually stolen and abused, he said.

"We have been working with law enforcement as well as a leading cybersecurity firm to assist with our investigation. We understand that this incident was likely part of a broader campaign involving a number of other victim companies," Lewis wrote.

"It appears that the focus was to obtain contact information such as names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of current and former subscribers in order to send fraudulent solicitations."

Dow Jones is among several prominent companies that have recently reported data breaches including Hilton hotels, Trump hotels, Experian, Scottrade and Ashley Madison.

In a letter to customers yesterday, Dow Jones chief executive William Lewis said law-enforcement officials in late July informed the company of a possible breach. He further stated that the incident was ''likely part of a broader campaign involving a number of other victim companies''.

If the assumption of a larger campaign held true, then the Dow Jones & Co breach was likely related to the Scottrade breach which was not disclosed last week, according to commentators.

Down Jones added it was not aware of any fraud as a result of the data breach.

Dow Jones has long been a part of the financial industry through its Dow Jones Industrial Average.

''Some easy steps you can take include watching for possible phishing attacks (suspicious emails enticing you to click on attachments or links), avoiding calls or emails from unknown sources that solicit your personal information and using trusted security software that is set to update automatically'', Lewis wrote.

A credit-bureau data breach might affect 15 million people - including over 350,000 people in Arizona who sought to become T-Mobile customers in the past two years, according to a statement from Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich. (See: Data hack hits 350,000 T-Mobile customers in Arizona).

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