According to the company, personal information about about 10, 000 Home Depot workers has been leaked onto a website that is used by digital hackers, as reported by several news organizations in the tech sector.
The hole was sudden and was caused by a software merchant, said Beth Marlowe, a Home Depot representative.
During assessment of their techniques, a third-party software vendor unintentionally made people a little example of Home Depot affiliates ‘ names, work email lists, and User IDs, she said. ” It was not some violation of our system”.
The vendor made the error of leaving the data publicly accessible online for everyone to see. It was retrieved by a thief known as IntelBroker, who finally posted the information on the illegal community BreachForums, according to Cybernews.
IntelBroker said it had the information for 10, 000 Home Depot people. The company declined to confirm that number, but said it was” a small sample”.
While this information is not very delicate, exposing merely business IDs, names, and contact addresses, it could be used by threat actors to perform targeted “phishing” attacks against Home Depot employees, CyberNews said.
In an effort to persuade unsuspecting customers to provide more sensitive data, such as Home Depot certifications, which could then be sold to others who might use the knowledge to breach the company’s system and steal commercial data or install malware, using that kind of data can be used to send waves of messages to undecided consumers.
The business stated that it has taken steps to increase security in the event of data misuse.
The information was posted on the obscene forum BreachForums by a hacker dubbed IntelBroker.
” In April 2024, Home Depot experienced a data breach that exposed the corporate data of the company’s 10K employees. Compromised data: full names and email addresses”, the hacker claimed, according to CyberNews.
The IntelBroker group is linked to a number of other hacking incidents, according to Bleeping Computer. Its previous hacking included theft of information from DC Health Link, an organization that administers the health care plans of U. S. House members, their staff, and their families, according to Bleeping Computer.
Home Depot has 2, 335 retail stores, including locations in in all 50 states. Home Depot employs about 465, 000 people.
___
© 2024 The Atlanta Journal- Constitution
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.