suffered a ‘Magecart’ style data breach incident that may have
potentially led to the exposure of its customers’ personal
information and payment card information.
TrueFire is one of the popular guitar tutoring websites
with over 1 million users, where wanna-be-guitarists pay online to
access a massive library of over 900 courses and 40,000 video
lessons.
Though TrueFire hasn’t yet publicly disclosed or acknowledged
the breach, The Hacker News learned about the incident after a few
affected customers posted
online[1] details of a
notification they received from the company last week.
The Hacker News also found a copy of the same ‘Notice Of Data
Breach‘ uploaded recently to the website of Montana Department of
Justice, specifically on a section where the government shares
information on data breaches that also affect Montana
residents.
[2][3]
Confirming the breach, the notification reveals that an attacker
gained unauthorized access to the company’s web server somewhere
around mid last year and stole payment information of customers
that were entered into its website for over five months, between
August 3, 2019, and January 14, 2020.
“While we do not store credit card information on our website,
it appears that the unauthorized person gained access to the site
and could have accessed the data of consumers who made payment card
purchases while that data was being entered,” the breach
notification says.
“We cannot state with certainty that your data was specifically
accessed; however, you should know that the information that was
potentially subject to unauthorized access includes your name,
address, payment card account number, card expiration date, and
security code,” the breach notification says.
compromise its website or if they had injected a digital credit
card skimmer on it, the scenario looks very similar to a Magecart style
attack[4].
For those unaware, Magecart
hackers typically compromise websites and secretly insert
malicious JavaScript code into their checkout pages that silently
captures payment information of customers making purchasing on the
sites and then sends it to the attacker’s remote server.
[5]
The company discovered this security incident on January 10 and
claimed to have now patched the web vulnerability that allowed
attackers to compromise its website in the first place.
Guitarists who made any online payment at the TrueFire website
between last August and this January are advised to block the
payment cards used on it and request a new one from their
respective financial institution.
Other customers are also advised to be vigilant and keep a close
eye on their bank and payment card statements for any unusual
activity.
As a precaution, all users are also encouraged to change
passwords for their TrueFire account and for any other online
account where they use the same credentials.
References
- ^
posted online
(www.jazzguitar.be) - ^
Notice Of Data Breach
(media.dojmt.gov) - ^
Montana Department of Justice
(dojmt.gov) - ^
Magecart style attack
(thehackernews.com) - ^
Magecart hackers
(thehackernews.com)