New York City-based manufacturing company OXO International says that hackers attempted to steal customer payment card data several times over the past couple of years.
OXO is a manufacturer of kitchen utensils, office supplies, and housewares that offers over 1,000 products covering various areas of the home and office. The company has websites for the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan.
In a letter to customers (PDF), which was also sent to the California Attorney General’s Office, the company revealed that unknown attackers compromised its U.S. website and that they likely managed to steal information users entered on the site.
The company says it learned of the compromise on December 17, 2018, but said customer information might have been stolen during various periods of time in 2017 and 2018.
“We currently believe that information entered in the customer order form between June 9, 2017 – November 28, 2017, June 8, 2018 – June 9, 2018, July 20, 2018 – October 16, 2018 may have been compromised,” the company said.
“While we believe the attempt to compromise your payment information may have been ineffective, we are notifying you out of an abundance of caution,” OXO also notes.
The manufacturing company revealed that stolen information might include users’ names and billing addresses, as well as their payment card information. The company advises impacted users to contact nationwide credit reporting agencies and even place a fraud alert in their files, for additional protection.
OXO did not provide specific details on the number of impacted users or on how the compromise happened, but it did say that the attackers used “unauthorized code” to steal customer information.
“When OXO obtained additional evidence, it retained forensic investigators to identify past website vulnerabilities. OXO has investigated the nature of the malicious code, removed the unauthorized code, conducted systems scans and reissued access credentials,” the company says.
Such code was previously observed in attacks performed by the “MageCart hackers,” who installed credit card skimmers on compromised e-commerce sites to capture and exfiltrate any information users would enter there.
Recently, Memphis-based Titan Manufacturing and Distributing also revealed that malicious code was installed on its compromised system to gather and steal customer information, including payment card details.
Web-skimming, however, isn’t unique to the MageCart hackers, and other miscreants too abuse such malicious code to harvest payment card information, either by compromising legitimate e-commerce websites or by setting up fake sites that mimic those of famous brands.
Related: Hackers Steal Customer Data From Manufacturing Company
Related: Seven Hacking Groups Operate Under “Magecart” Umbrella, Analysis Shows