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More than 8,000 Eircom StudyHub customers hacked in data breach

Usernames and passwords were compromised in the attack on the exam support service.

THE ACCOUNT DETAILS of more than 8,000 users of Eircom’s StudyHub service were compromised this week after a server was hacked.

Some 8,404 customers’ usernames and passwords fell victim to the attack, which took place on Thursday against a server run by Clear Voice Systems Ltd, trading as ExamSupport.ie.

Details of another 2,425 people who were ExamSupport.ie customers but not StudyHub users were also breached.

In a statement, Eircom said today that no other customer information was at risk, and that Exam Support had responded immediately to stop the attack.

“Exam Support has taken steps now to reassure us that security systems are strengthened,” an Eircom spokesman told TheJournal.ie. It’s believed the breach took the form of an SQL attack, in which a bogus query is sent to the website to extract information.

All 20,000 StudyHub users have been emailed about the breach and asked to change their passwords.

Eircom said it has informed the Data Protection Commissioner and the gardaí about the breach.

More: Eircom criticised by DPC over slow reporting of laptop data breach>

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11 Comments
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    Mute Joe Lafferty
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    Feb 17th 2012, 7:14 PM

    Gardai are keen to speak to owner of the account “select username, password from user” about the intrusion. First data on laptops, now this. Bad week for Eircom. Tut tut.

    42
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    Mute Bob Coggins
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    Feb 17th 2012, 11:53 PM

    Compliance in quarter are gonna be checking Irishjobs.ie on Monday….

    4
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    Mute Barry
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    Feb 17th 2012, 7:25 PM

    It seems eircom can be trusted, there are secondary year students that know how to secure data better then eircom does for its customers,

    26
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    Mute jimbo
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    Feb 17th 2012, 7:21 PM

    Another breach of data where will it end?

    25
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    Mute Ian イアン [STGオタク]
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    Feb 18th 2012, 8:19 AM

    When Sean Sherlock gets his wish granted by the ACTA genie.

    4
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    Mute Donal McCarthy
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    Feb 17th 2012, 8:18 PM

    StudyHub uses email addresses as user names so it’s quite a serious breach, given the number of people who have one password for multiple accounts. My junior-cert student came to me today and was all ‘daaad, stupidhub isn’t working!’.

    It’s probably just as well, although still laughable, that Eircom require you to register separately for MusicHub; SportsHub; StudyHub; Support and for your Eircom account, i.e. 5 times.

    20
    Rory
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    Mute Rory
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    Feb 17th 2012, 8:45 PM

    Looks like someone wasn’t sanitising their inputs! Boom! I bet it was little Bobby Droptables… :)

    18
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    Mute Aaron Hastings
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    Feb 18th 2012, 2:42 PM

    Those who thumbed-down this comment clearly aren’t from the Internet :)

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    Mute Chris Jordan
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    Feb 18th 2012, 7:55 AM

    Eircom have got to be one of the most inept ISPs out there. Where will it all end? Amateurs.

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    Mute foggy_lad
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    Feb 18th 2012, 2:10 AM

    At least it didn’t take the incompetents 6weeks or more to admit this intrusion and inform customers and report it to the data protection crowd.

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    Mute Aaron Hastings
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    Feb 18th 2012, 2:40 PM

    I really wish the media would stop using the word “hack” to describe cyber security breaches. These are known as “attacks” or “cracks” by data security experts. The definition of hacking is completely different and unrelated to illegal activity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_(programmer_subculture)

    5
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