Re-posted with the permission of one of the breach notification recipients. 🙂
The following data breach notification has come into our possession.
Matt Blaze Andrea Matwyshyn
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December 25, 2015
Dear current or former child:
Our North Pole Operations Center was recently the target of a malicious cyber intrusion, which resulted in the theft of records from the master databases of Santa Global Enterprises, Inc. (“Santa”). Our forensic investigators suspect the intrusion to be the work of a rival non-state actor [1] trying to steal our intellectual property. [2]
The impacted information includes children’s names, addresses, birthdays, purchasing preferences, and assorted other demographic and behavioral data. Most of the children whose information was compromised had provided the information voluntarily through the transmission of a letter addressed to Santa. Additional information about a particular child may have also been generated by unsolicited communications from a parent, guardian or sibling or from solicited responses to background investigation inquiries conducted by us for purposes of providing the child’s requested services (all of the above, in the aggregate, the “Voluntary Disclosures”). The breach affects all Voluntary Disclosures that occurred between the years of 1980 to the present [3] worldwide and impacts both the “naughty” and the “nice” databases. You are receiving this notification because we have determined that information from your Voluntary Disclosures was likely part of the compromised data.
At this time, our forensic experts believe that chimney access control information, including, without limitation, any private keys, has not been impacted. We will continue to investigate the extent of the breach.
Santa takes your privacy seriously. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you during the holiday season, and we appreciate your choosing Santa for your holiday needs. A gift certificate for credit monitoring will be left under next year’s tree. Ho ho ho. We hope you will take advantage of these services.
Sincerely,
Kristopher Kringle
CEO, Santa Global Enterprises, Inc.
[1] It has recently come to our attention that rival non-state actors such as the Easter Bunny are actively acquiring full spectrum cyber capabilities.
[2] We remind you that the Santa terms and conditions of use (the “Santa EULA”) are incorporated by reference into any and all exchanges with Santa. By accepting any gifts from Santa, you agreed that the Santa EULA, including, without limitation the provisions acknowledging that that your use of any gifts constitutes sufficient consideration for the assignment of any and all intellectual property interests you may possess in any information that you submit to Santa, in any medium.
[3] All records from 1980 to 1996 were converted from the prior manual elf-based cardpunch system and digitized for inclusion in the impacted databases.