E-commerce site EBay is asking users to change their passwords after a cyberattack compromised a company database containing customers’ names, encrypted passwords, e-mail addresses, physical addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth.
The company said on Wednesday that there is no evidence that any financial or credit card information was stolen and no sign that the breach has resulted in unauthorized activity for its 145 million active users.
EBay says its investigation is active and it cannot comment on the specific number of accounts affected, but says the number could be large.
The company said that cyberattackers stole a small number of employee login credentials that gave access to EBay’s corporate network. The San Jose, California-based company is working with law enforcement to investigate the attack, it added.
The database was allegedly hacked sometime between late February and early March, it said, but the compromised employee log-in credentials were first detected just two weeks ago.
EBay owns electronic payment service PayPal, but says there is no evidence that PayPal information was hacked, since that data is stored separately.
The attack follows several other high-profile data security incidents, including a breach at Target and the recent discovery of the “Heartbleed” computer security flaw.
Heartbleed is a point of weakness in a key piece of security technology used by more than 500,000 Web sites that had been exposing online passwords and other sensitive data to potential theft for more than two years.
During Target’s data breach last year, hackers allegedly stole about 40 million debit and credit card numbers and the personal information of 70 million people.
EBay Inc shares fell US$0.08 to US$51.88 in New York trading on Wednesday.
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