Fergie's Tech Blog

Attorney Alleges Ameritrade Knew Of Security Breach A Year Ago

Sharon Gaudin writes on InformationWeek:

An attorney launching a class-action lawsuit against TD Ameritrade Holding alleges the online brokerage knew a hacker had access to a customer database as far back as a year ago.

Last Friday, Ameritrade e-mailed account holders and put a public advisory on its Web site alerting users that a hacker broke into one of its databases and stole personally identifying information for some of its 6.3 million customers. The company said names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and home addresses were taken in the data breach. Client assets, along with user IDs, personal identification numbers, and passwords, were not stored in the compromised database.

However, the advisory noted that it's unclear if account numbers, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers were stolen. Ameritrade did not say when the hackers got into the database or how long they remained there.

posted by Fergie @ 9/17/2007 02:05:00 PM