Alibaba’s eCommerce platform and Singaporean eCommerce company, Lazada announced on October 30 that personal information including addresses, partial credit card numbers from 1.1 million accounts had been hacked. Undoubtedly, this is a major breach in the city-state of 5.7 million people. A spokesperson on behalf of the company Lazada said in a statement,
“The user information that was illegally accessed includes names, phone numbers, email and mailing addresses, encrypted passwords and partial credit card numbers.”
As per the report, the hackers were able to illegally access vital and personal user information including names, phone numbers, email and mailing addresses, passwords, and some partial credit card numbers. Apparently, this breach was organized and carried out by hackers from the database of the grocery subsidiary RedMart.
RedMart was founded back in 2011, and five years later, in 2016, the Lazada group decided to acquire the company. RedMart mainly is an online grocery shop that provides online services for fresh food and other groceries in Singapore. More than 8000 products are covered by the online grocery company. One of the biggest features of RedMart is its self-built warehousing and logistics.
After the news of data hacking was made available by Lazada, the company made it a point to emphasize that it has taken immediate steps to prevent access to the database; the company further commented that the current user data will not be affected.
In June 2017, Alibaba invested $1 billion USD in Lazada which increased its stake in the company from 51% to 83%. Lazada also pointed out that the information which was illegally taken by the database of RedMart was more than 18 months out of date. The company also pointed out that it immediately blocked access to the database. Given the official statement released by Lazada, it appears that most of its users need not worry about the hack.
