March 25, 2023

Mailchimp slips up again, suffers security breach after falling on social engineering banana skin

For the second time in lower than a 12 months, electronic mail publication service Mailchimp has discovered itself within the embarrassing place of admitting it has suffered a data breach.

Mailchimp says {that a} social engineering assault succeeded in tricking Mailchimp workers and contractors into handing over their login credentials. These particulars had been then efficiently utilized by a hacker to entry 133 Mailchimp accounts.

Mailchimp says that it contacted all affected account holders on January 12, lower than 24 hours after the safety breach was found.

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A type of Mailchimp clients who seem to have been affected was WooCommerce, makers of a WordPress plugin that’s well-liked with companies working on-line shops.

Woocommerce email
Woocommerce warns its subscribers that Mailchimp has suffered a safety breach

WooCommerce contacted affected customers warning them that a few of their private data had been uncovered:

  • Their identify
  • Their on-line retailer URL
  • Their tackle
  • E mail tackle

Such data may clearly be exploited by attackers in, as an example, phishing assaults. Little question WooCommerce, and different Mailchimp customers, are lower than impressed that their personal clients have been put in danger as a consequence of Mailchimp’s safety slip-up.

Mailchimp is not any stranger to safety breaches.

In March 2022, Mailchimp discovered that an attacker had managed to entry a device utilized by its buyer help crew, accessing 300 shopper accounts and efficiently stealing the subscriber knowledge from 102 of them.

Mailchimp clients who labored within the cryptocurrency and monetary sectors discovered that their accounts had been focused on that event, opening alternatives for scammers to ship out convincing (however malicious) emails to unsuspecting publication subscribers.

Then, as in the latest safety breach, the attacker used social engineering to dupe Mailchimp staff into handing over their login credentials.

Though Mailchimp seems to have acted comparatively promptly on this occasion, there should certainly be questions requested as as to if it’s doing sufficient to lock down entry to its inner instruments, and guaranteeing solely those that are actually authorised are in a position to entry them.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the anti-virus trade having labored for numerous safety firms because the early Nineteen Nineties when he wrote the primary ever model of Dr Solomon’s Anti-Virus Toolkit for Home windows. Now an unbiased safety analyst, he frequently makes media appearances and is a world public speaker on the subject of laptop safety, hackers, and on-line privateness.
Observe him on Twitter at @gcluley, on Mastodon at @[email protected], or drop him an electronic mail.