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Dell reveals ‘unauthorized’ attempt to extract customer passwords

“Though it is possible some of this information was removed from Dell’s network, our investigations found no conclusive evidence that any was extracted,” Dell said.

Earlier this month, Dell detected and thwarted “unauthorized activity” on its network that was an attempt to extract customer names, email addresses, and hashed passwords from Dell.com, the computing giant announced Wednesday.

“Though it is possible some of this information was removed from Dell’s network, our investigations found no conclusive evidence that any was extracted,” Dell said in a statement.

The attempted extraction occurred Nov. 9.

The Round Rock, Texas, company said protections liked hashed passwords and mandatory password resets would limit the impact of any potential exposure. Hashing is the application of an algorithm that allows a web service to store an encrypted version of a password without storing the password itself.

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“Credit card and other sensitive customer information was not targeted,” and the incident did not impact any Dell products or services, the statement said.

Dell said it had contacted law enforcement about the incident and hired a cybersecurity firm to do an independent investigation.

Sean Lyngaas

Written by Sean Lyngaas

Sean Lyngaas is CyberScoop’s Senior Reporter covering the Department of Homeland Security and Congress. He was previously a freelance journalist in West Africa, where he covered everything from a presidential election in Ghana to military mutinies in Ivory Coast for The New York Times. Lyngaas’ reporting also has appeared in The Washington Post, The Economist and the BBC, among other outlets. His investigation of cybersecurity issues in the nuclear sector, backed by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, won plaudits from industrial security experts. He was previously a reporter with Federal Computer Week and, before that, with Smart Grid Today. Sean earned a B.A. in public policy from Duke University and an M.A. in International Relations from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

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