Aug 25: US job site Monster.com has been robbed of data of about 1 million job seekers. Hackers using a virus called ‘Trojan’ have stolen the necessary information about 1.6 million job entries. This is to be known that more than 70 million CVs are uploaded in its database.
This hacking was disclosed by the internet security firm Symantec which stated that a piece of malicious software known as a ‘Trojan’ tried to access monster.com and transferred the information to a remote computer.
The hacked information was regarding names, postal addresses, and telephone numbers though the site denied that any valuable information regarding bank accounts have been hacked by the virus.
The virus stole login details belonging to employers from the server computers. Then it sent fake emails to the users of the website and asked them to furnish details. The virus has encrypted the files and asked for the money to unlock them.
Servers in Ukraine were used to attack the website. They accessed the information to lend authenticity to the emails sent to the users. The servers were shut down after the detection of such hacking in consultation with the Ukrainian company.
Though attack was being made since July 06 according to the security researchers but it was announced on Aug 17 and it affected people mainly from US.
This is not first time that such phishing is taking place but it has increased the security concerns about the personal information of jobseekers which can be misused by others. It may be used to blackmail or identity thieves may misuse it materialise other crimes.
Monster.com has advised to its customers to install anti-virus software in the computer and contact the company if they find any suspect activity in their account. Technical experts have also suggested internet users to be aware of the phishing e-mails and not to provide any personal information and click on links if that is highlighted as spam.
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