VTech Holdings has announced that its Lodge app store has been hacked, indicating that at least 4.8 million accounts have been breached.
Reports said that data belonging to some 4.8 million parents and over 200,000 children was taken. It said that included names, email addresses, passwords and home addresses of parents; as well as first names, genders and birthdays of children, BBC reported.
Maker of high-tech toys did not disclose the number of accounts that were impacted, but did detail that its app store database was hacked on Nov. 14. The company's FAQ indicates that it only found out about the attack on Nov. 23 when a journalist started asking questions and VTech confirmed the breach a day later.
The company sent an email to its customers stating that they immediately conducted a thorough investigation, according to Reuters. It involved a comprehensive check of the affected site and implementation of measures to defend against further attacks. VTech said it contacted investigators and installed measures to thwart further attacks. VTech's database also includes passwords, IP and mailing addresses.
The passwords are said to have been encrypted using an old and outdated hashing algorithm, MD5, meaning simple passwords can be easily cracked, according to Microsoft MVP for developer security Troy Hunt. However, the database did not however store credit card information or personal identification data, like Social Security numbers.
Hong Kong-based high-tech toy maker said that hacked database stored information belonged to customers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Luxembourg, Latin America, Hong Kong, China, Australia and New Zealand.