Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Dell has announced its online marketplace experienced a “cybersecurity incident” and the company has reset all Dell.com customers’ passwords.
On Wednesday, Dell released a statement informing customers of the situation. It begins, “You may have read about a cybersecurity incident involving Dell.com.” In fact, we had not read about this incident because today’s announcement is the first time anyone involved has mentioned it.
The company said that it first noticed and “disrupted” unauthorised activity on its site on November 9. It has retained an independent digital forensics team to perform a full investigation. From the release:
Through that investigation, we found no conclusive evidence that any customer information was taken. Furthermore, there is no indication that any credit card or other sensitive customer information was targeted. We have cybersecurity measures in place that limit the impact of any potential exposure, including the hashing of customers’ passwords.
Out of an abundance of caution, we proactively reset Dell.com customers’ passwords to further protect customers and their accounts. No Dell products or services were affected.
Dell claims that the hackers were only attempting to extract customer names, email addresses and hashed passwords. The fact that the passwords were hashed should’ve provided an extra layer of security if anyone did indeed manage to get a hold of the information. Dell did recommend that if you reuse your Dell.com password on other sites, you should go ahead and reset it everywhere.