Gucci, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen customer data, including information on luxury products, stolen by hackers
Hand bag exposed in the Gucci store showcase on Fifth Avenue in New York on July 31, 2013. Photo: Richard B. Levine / Avalon / Profimedia
Hackers stole the private data belonging, potentially, to the millions of clients of the luxury brands Gucci, Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen in an attack on the French parent company Kering, reports BBC News on Monday.
Kering confirmed the breach in a statement without appointing affected brands, saying that he identified in June that “an unauthorized third party has obtained temporary access to our systems and accessed limited data from some of our (fashion) houses.”
The attack seems to be part of a larger phenomenon that affects luxury brands and retailers this year.
Security breaches also took place at the neighborhood, a company part of the Richemont group, and some of the LVMH brands (Louis Vuitton – Moët Hennessy).
In July, the Hong Kong Privacy Authority announced that it is investigating a data leak that affects about 419,000 Louis Vuitton customers, part of the LVMH group.
The stolen data of Kering customers include names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, addresses and total amounts spent in brand stores, according to the BBC account.
Kering said that no financial information, such as credit card numbers or bank accounts, were stolen.
Hackers, who have identified themselves as “Shiny Hunters” for the BBC, claim to have 7.4 million unique email addresses.
Kering also reported that his brands immediately revealed the breach of competent authorities and notified customers in accordance with local regulations. The company did not comment on when asked by Reuters from which countries are the stores affected by the attack of hackers.
A small sample shared BBC by hackers as proof contained thousands of details about customers who seem to be authentic. Once analyzed, the files were deleted.
One of the information in the stolen data is “total sales”, which shows how much money a person has spent with each brand.
Some customers spent over $ 10,000, and a few spent between $ 30,000 and $ 86,000 in stores in the small data sample analyzed by the British television station.
This information is particularly worrying to the victims, because it could lead to the targeting of people with high expenses by secondary hackers and fraudsters, if the group of hackers decides to disclose the information of other cyber criminals.
The “Shiny Hunters” group seems to act alone and has stated for the BBC, through the Chat of the Telegram Messaging application, that it broke the luxury brands in April, through Kering systems.
