Network Solutions, a provider of Web-related services for small and medium businesses, has started reaching out to customers about a data breach that was discovered in early June. Credit card information on 573,928 individual consumers may have been compromised in the breach, which Network Solutions publicly reported at the end of the day on July 24.
Less than half of the company's 10,000-plus e-commerce services customers were affected in the breach, which occurred when hackers implanted a code on the system used to deliver e-commerce tools to clients. Over a three-month period — from March 12 to June 8 — the code diverted transaction and personal information from 4,343 merchant Web sites to a rogue server.
Susan Wade, director of PR for Network Solutions, said that the unauthorized code was discovered on June 8 during routine procedures, and Network Solutions immediately called in a team of data breach forensics experts to analyze the leak and track it.