The Japanese company that owns the Hello Kitty brand said it has fixed a security leak in an online fan site for the famous character that compromised the personal information of 3.3 million users.
Sanrio Co’s digital arm on Tuesday said that it “corrected” a security vulnerability on the SanrioTown.com Web site and was carrying out an investigation.
The leak was discovered on Saturday by a security researcher.
Hong Kong-based Sanrio Digital said anyone who knew the Internet addresses of “specific vulnerable servers” could have accessed personal information such as names and birthdates. Passwords were also available, but were encrypted.
However, it added that the data did not include credit card or other payment details, and that no information was stolen.
“We investigated the problem and applied fixes, including securing the servers identified as vulnerable” by the security researcher, Chris Vickery, the company said in a security advisory posted on the site.
SanrioTown.com is an online community for Hello Kitty enthusiasts around the world operated by Sanrio Digital. The site lets users play games, watch videos and keep up with news on the character.
The site’s members include 186,261 minors, said Mark Leeper, whose public relations firm is representing Sanrio Digital.
It was the second Internet security breach in the past month involving a large amount of children’s data.
Kids’ technology maker VTech reported a data breach that exposed the personal information of 6.4 million children around the world as well as 4.9 million parent accounts they were connected to.
British police have arrested one man on hacking-related charges in that case.
Sanrio Digital is a joint venture between Hong Kong game developer Typhoon Games Ltd, which has a 70 percent stake, and Sanrio, which owns the rest.
SPECULATION: The central bank cut the loan-to-value ratio for mortgages on second homes by 10 percent and denied grace periods to prevent a real-estate bubble The central bank’s board members in September agreed to tighten lending terms to induce a soft landing in the housing market, although some raised doubts that they would achieve the intended effect, the meeting’s minutes released yesterday showed. The central bank on Sept. 18 introduced harsher loan restrictions for mortgages across Taiwan in the hope of curbing housing speculation and hoarding that could create a bubble and threaten the financial system’s stability. Toward the aim, it cut the loan-to-value ratio by 10 percent for second and subsequent home mortgages and denied grace periods for first mortgages if applicants already owned other residential
EXPORT CONTROLS: US lawmakers have grown more concerned that the US Department of Commerce might not be aggressively enforcing its chip restrictions The US on Friday said it imposed a US$500,000 penalty on New York-based GlobalFoundries Inc, the world’s third-largest contract chipmaker, for shipping chips without authorization to an affiliate of blacklisted Chinese chipmaker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯). The US Department of Commerce in a statement said GlobalFoundries sent 74 shipments worth US$17.1 million to SJ Semiconductor Corp (盛合晶微半導體), an affiliate of SMIC, without seeking a license. Both SMIC and SJ Semiconductor were added to the department’s trade restriction Entity List in 2020 over SMIC’s alleged ties to the Chinese military-industrial complex. SMIC has denied wrongdoing. Exports to firms on the list
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip assembly and testing manufacturing (ATM) service provider, expects to double its leading-edge advanced technology services revenue next year to more than US$1 billion, benefiting from strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips, a company executive said on Thursday. That would be the second year that ASE has doubled its advanced chip packaging and testing technology revenue, following an estimate of more than US$500 million for this year. ASE is one of the major beneficiaries from the AI boom as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is outsourcing production of advanced chip
TECHNOLOGY EXIT: The selling of Apple stock might be related to the death of Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger last year, an analyst said Billionaire Warren Buffett is now sitting on more than US$325 billion in cash after continuing to unload billions of US dollars worth of Apple Inc and Bank of America Corp shares this year and continuing to collect a steady stream of profits from all of Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s assorted businesses without finding any major acquisitions. Berkshire on Saturday said it sold off about 100 million more Apple shares in the third quarter after halving its massive investment in the iPhone maker the previous quarter. The remaining stake of about 300 million shares was valued at US$69.9 billion at the end of