EBay believed customer data were safe
Info belonging to 145 million users hacked in early May
BOSTON • EBay Inc initially believed that customer data were safe as forensic investigators reviewed a network security breach discovered in early May, global marketplaces chief Devin Wenig said in an interview on Friday.
He declined to say when the com- pany first realized customer data was involved or how many days it took them to prepare Wednesday’s public announcement about the massive breach in which hackers accessed data belonging to all 145 million eBay users.
“For a very long period of time we did not believe that there was any eBay customer data compromised,” Mr. Wenig said. “When we found out that there was, we moved swiftly to disclose,” he added.
EBay has come under pressure from customers and authorities over the massive hacking of customer data disclosed this week, as three U.S. states have begun investigating the e-commerce company’s security practices.
The Internet retail giant, which has mobilized its senior executives in a subsequent investigation of the attack, has no plans to compensate customers or offer free credit monitoring for now because it had detected no financial fraud, Mr. Wenig said.
On Wednesday, the e-commerce company announced that hackers raided its network between late February and early March. The company said financial information was not compromised and its payments unit PayPal was not affected.
The company advised customers to change their passwords immedi- ately, saying they were among the pieces of data stolen by cyber criminals who carried out the attack three months ago.
When eBay first discovered the network breach in early May, the senior team was immediately involved and held multiple daily calls on the issue. Since the customer data breach was disclosed on Wednesday, some eBay staff have been working around the clock.
Mr. Wenig said hackers got in using employees’ credentials.
He said that “millions” of users have reset their passwords, but declined to elaborate. The company has begun pushing out emails and notifications to its users, but he said it would take “some time” to complete the task.