Greeting card website suffers second breach this year

Moonpig, the web-based greeting card business, has confessed to being the victim of another online security breach, and details of a number of its users have been published on the web.

The firm, based in the UK, has started to contact subscribers to make them aware of the breach, and released the following response through its website:

“Late on Friday, 24 July, we became aware of a security issue whereby a number of Moonpig customer email addresses, account balance and passwords had been illegally published. As a precautionary measure, we promptly closed our Moonpig site and apps to help us investigate and contain this issue.”

It went on to say that after the investigations, it now holds evidence that any customer login details identified were previously taken from third parties, as opposed to being swiped directly from the Moonpig website.

Moonpig has disabled a number of passwords, which the customers will need to reset.

The company doesn’t itself hold credit card details, so any damage caused is limited, but this is not the first time it has suffered a breach this year. In January, a defect found in its mobile app allowed intruders the ability to access user accounts without a username and password.

Moonpig is not the only company to suffer a security breach this year but a second breach suggests a need for improvements to maintain online safety, perhaps including offering cyber security jobs to professionals capable of detecting and preventing online attacks.