Fidelity data breach exposes details of thousands of customers

Asset management powerhouse Fidelity Investments has confirmed suffering a data breach in which crooks stole sensitive information on tens of thousands of people.

The company revealed the news via a breach notification filed with the Office of the Maine Attorney General, noting between August 17 and 19 2024, threat actors used two “recently established” customer accounts to access the company infrastructure.

“We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took steps to terminate the access,” the company said in the letter. “An investigation was promptly launched with assistance from external security experts,” it added. The investigation determined that the crooks obtained information “related to a small subset” of Fidelity customers, and did not access anyone’s accounts.

Identity theft monitoring

This “small subset” counts exactly 77,099 customers, including 337 Maine residents. The letter does not detail the type of information stolen, but TechCrunch found a separate filing with the Massachusetts attorney general, in which it was said the hackers obtained people’s Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses - more than enough information to engage in phishing, identity theft, or possibly even wire fraud.

To access the data, the crooks allegedly created two customer accounts, and used them to submit fraudulent requests to an internal database, which held images of documents belonging to Fidelity customers.

So far, there has been no evidence of the data being misused in the wild, but Fidelity isn’t taking any chances. All affected individuals are being offered credit monitoring and identity restoration services, free of charge, for 24 months.

Fidelity Investments is a major financial services company, offering investment management, retirement planning, brokerage, and wealth management services. The firm manages over $4 trillion in assets for more than 40 million individual investors, institutions, and financial advisors.

Fidelity provides access to mutual funds, ETFs, and a wide array of investment products.

Via TechCrunch

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