The company reassures customers that their financial information has not been compromised

May 1, 2013 11:08 GMT  ·  By

Online reputation and review management firm Reputation.com has suffered a security breach. The company has started notifying customers, informing them that their passwords have been reset.

Reputation.com representatives have stated that the attack was “interrupted and swiftly shut down” before the attackers could complete it.

“Following the attack, our engineering and security team immediately conducted an exhaustive investigation, working closely with independent security experts to determine what information may have been accessed,” reads the notification sent to customers (via Dave Lucas).

“We are also implementing additional security measures, beyond the high level of security that is already in place, to ensure your continued protection.”

According to the firm, they’re confident that the cybercriminals haven’t been able to access financial information – which is said to be stored on third-party systems –, account details, communication between the user and the Reputation.com team, and information about the provided services.

On the other hand, the attackers have accessed names, email addresses, physical addresses and, in some cases, dates of birth, phone numbers and occupational information.

In addition, they’ve also gained access to a list of “highly encrypted” passwords for a “small minority” of users.

The company says it has reset all user passwords despite the fact that it’s unlikely that the ones stolen by the hackers can be decrypted.

Hopefully, they’re right. They haven’t named the encryption algorithm, but they reveal that the passphrases are “salted” and “hashed.”

Unfortunately, we’ve seen numerous instances in which password hashes have been easily decrypted after a company claimed they were unbreakable.

In addition to their passwords being reset, affected customers can request free credit monitoring for a year.

According to Reputation.com’s website, the company has thousands of users from over 100 countries around the world.