EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

In June of this year, British electronics retailer Dixons Carphone revealed it had been hit with a huge data breach dating back to 2017. At the time, it was thought that 1.2 million personal data files were affected. Now that number has spiked to 10 million.

According to the BBC, the scope of the breach was limited to personal information such as names, addresses and email addresses, but disturbing, nonetheless. “It’s as if a householder who discovered in June that burglars had stolen the telly has belatedly looked in the garage and found that the car has gone too.”

Referencing an investor announcement by the company, Engadget reports, “While there is now evidence that some of this data may have left our systems, these records do not contain payment card or bank account details and there is no evidence that any fraud has resulted.”

When the data breach was first reported in June, it was revealed that hackers also accessed 5.9 million payment cards, but this aspect was downplayed because the cards were protected by the chip-and-PIN system.

Dixons Carphone has been working with authorities to investigate, while also implementing measures to address the problem. Quoting the firm’s chief executive officer, Alex Baldock, Engadget writes, “That’s included closing off the unauthorised access, adding new security measures and launching an immediate investigation, which has allowed us to build a fuller understanding of the incident that we’re updating on today.”

Get the full story at Engadget.