Science & Tech · Cybersecurity · 2 hrs ago
Arara email service breach may expose 77 million addresses
Attackers broke into Arara’s email delivery service, run by a subsidiary of Paycloud Holdings in Japan.
Between October 28 and 31, they accessed servers used by up to 380 customer companies, and data was taken from 97 servers.
About 77 million email addresses may have been exposed, along with some customers’ names, phone numbers, addresses and other membership details; the count is still being checked.
The company says it does not hold credit card numbers, so that payment data was not exposed in this breach.
Attackers also used the service to send up to 7.13 million fake credit card company emails to addresses they supplied.
Arara suspended the service on October 31 and says it will decide when to restart after investigating how the attackers got in and checking that its systems are safe; anyone who receives a suspicious email should not click its links.
PayCloud Holdings said about 77 million email addresses may have been taken from systems used by its subsidiary Arara’s email delivery service.
The breach affected 97 servers in environments used by up to about 380 client companies.
Names, phone numbers, addresses and other member information were also taken, with the affected data varying by client.
Arara said up to about 7.13 million fraudulent emails impersonating credit card companies were sent using its service.
The company stopped providing the service on October 31 and said it had not set a date for resuming it.
- Who
- A third party accessed servers used by Arara, a subsidiary of PayCloud Holdings.
- What
- About 77 million email addresses may have been taken, along with other customer information. Up to about 7.13 million fraudulent emails were also sent.
- When
- The intrusions occurred from October 28 to 31. PayCloud announced the expanded findings on November 2.
- Where
- Arara’s email delivery service and servers in environments used by its client companies.
- Why
- Not stated
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
A third party accessed servers and took data; up to about 7.13 million fraudulent emails were sent using Arara’s service.
PayCloud announced that an initial investigation found about 3.01 million email addresses had been taken.
Arara identified the wider incident, took measures to block access and stopped providing the service.
PayCloud announced that the estimated number of affected email addresses had risen to about 77 million.
- Email addresses
- About 77 million, including addresses that may have been taken
- Affected servers
- 97
- Client companies
- Up to about 380
- Fraudulent emails
- Up to about 7.13 million
- Service suspension
- October 31
- Payment card data
- Arara said it did not hold this information