In response to recent news coverage indicating that breaches affecting McDonald’s, DeviantART customers (and possibly Walgreens customers?) were due to a breach at Silverpop, their CEO Bill Nussey responds on Silverpop’s blog:
The forensic investigation into the cyber attack on our company and customers has yielded some valuable insights. First, we have confirmed that our quick reaction to reset customer passwords was successful in halting the attack. Second, the specialized monitoring systems run by our outside experts continue to confirm that our existing and enhanced security measures are successfully protecting our application and our customers. Third, we are confident that our application infrastructure, the servers and networks behind our products, was not targeted or compromised as part of this attack. Fourth, third-party experts have confirmed that the attack was particularly sophisticated and we are working with customers and industry peers to share what we have learned.
In parallel to our customer and security-focused efforts, we continue to work with law enforcement to identify the criminals that have targeted us and several other companies in our industry. Stephen Emmett, one of the FBI special agents we have been communicating with, allowed me to share the following: “We have been and continue to work with Silverpop and others in the industry who have had criminals attempt to breach their systems and security safeguards. We are focused on identifying those that committed these cybercrimes and bringing them to justice.”
The media has recently been covering the security disclosures of several large brands. It is important to clarify that several of these large brands have never been Silverpop customers. I’m hopeful it is clear that the disclosed attacks cover multiple companies in our space and we, as an industry, need to work together to protect the security of all of our customers.
For the time being, our efforts will remain focused on the security of our applications and customer data, working with law enforcement and communicating with our customers, especially the small percentage who were negatively impacted by these attacks.
Rather than saying that “several of these large brands have never been Silverpop customers,” it would be better to just be clear which ones are not their customers, as they owe them no duty of confidentiality if they are not customers. That way, the media can get the story right.