Educational Toy Maker Hacked, Data Of Parents And Kids Stolen

Electronic toy manufacturer VTech confirmed on Friday a data breach which has affected almost 5 million of its customers.

Learning Lodge, which is similar to app stores like Google Play, is aimed at parents, offering them additional educational content that can be downloaded onto various VTech devices.

The hackers gained access to customers’ profiles, which include their names, passwords, email and mailing addresses and IP address, in addition some personal information, including the name and ages of children.

The company emphasizes that its Learning Lodge customer database does not store credit card information and any personal identification data like ID card numbers, driving license numbers, and Social Security numbers.

According to MSN Money News on November 27, Vtech has the name, addresses, gender and birthdays of their customers’ kids stored in the data base and they are linked to the parents’ names.

Hackers made their way into VTech’s Learning Lodge app store customer database, according to the company.

The company said that password information was also stolen, but that it was encrypted, and stressed that the data did not include credit card information.

VTech has been open about this, posting about the leak on its official pages. From there, the attacker is said to have gained root access to the company’s web and database servers.

VTech promotes its Kid Connect service as a way for kids to safely join in digital communication, but the hacker claims he found tens of thousands of pictures of children and their parents, as well as chat messages and some audio files.

“Nevertheless, Mr. Hunt said that the stolen data can without a doubt provide a bad actor with more than enough dirt to use to their advantages”. Moreover, upon discovery of such fraudulent act, the company immediately conducted a thorough investigation.

The data breach was first noted by a Canadian journalist who asked about the incident on November 23.

“Due to a breach of security on our Learning Lodge website, we have temporarily suspended the site”, said a message on the Learning Lodge site Monday. But it is reportedly investigating the hack and has taken steps to prevent any future hacks.