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The owner of the Vans shoe brand has issued a warning regarding its December cyber incident, saying customers could be susceptible to fraud and phishing attacks.
Parent company VF Corporation, which also owns Timberland and The North Face, announced that it had detected “unauthorised occurrence” on its network on 13 December 2023.
During the incident, some of its IT services were encrypted and data stolen, affecting 35.5 million customers.
While the group responsible for the attack was initially unknown, the now defunct ALPHV (also known as BlackCat) has since claimed responsibility, announcing its role on 28 December.
According to VF Corporation, customer data accessed included email addresses, phone numbers, full names, shipping and billing addresses, and in some cases, payment method information, order histories and total order values.
However, the company did say that it was impossible that any financial data such as credit card information would be at risk.
“Please note that, in any event, we never collect or retain in our IT systems any detailed payment/financial information, such as, for example, bank account or credit card information, so there is no chance that any detailed financial information was exposed to the threat actors,” said VF Corporation.
Despite this, the company has advised its customers to remain vigilant and alert that scammers could engage in fraud or other forms of attacks such as spear phishing.
It is unlikely that the threat group behind the incident in the first place will be the ones to engage in these attacks, as ALPHV has thrown in the towel.
Following one of its affiliates launching an attack on Change Healthcare in the US, the victim company paid out $22 million in ransom, which ALPHV then pocketed before going dark.
ALPHV blamed “the feds” for its retirement, claiming that the FBI and global law enforcement had taken its infrastructure down just as it had late last year.
However, it appears that the group just reused the takedown banner that appeared on its site in the initial operation and has scammed its affiliate out of the money.
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