ASOS confirms data breach after a fake "hacked" alert
The British retailer says names and contact details may have been viewed on third-party platforms. It does not believe cards or passwords were exposed, and gives no numbers.
British fashion retailer ASOS has confirmed a data breach. In an investor statement dated Oct. 6, ASOS said someone gained unauthorized access to third-party platforms it uses to communicate with customers, and that basic details such as name and contact information may have been viewed.
The company says it does not believe card data or passwords were seen, that its website and app are working normally and that it restricted access to those platforms. It has not said how many customers were affected.
The incident became visible around 10:00 that day, when the app sent a notification the company had not written. According to BleepingComputer, the text read "ASOS HACKED" and led to a Telegram channel run by Xuanye, a group that goes by that name. The statement does not give a time zone.
According to Help Net Security, the message was addressed to ASOS's data protection lead and its IT team, not to shoppers. It claimed to have fully compromised an instance of Snowflake, a cloud data service, and warned it would leak information if the company did not negotiate.
That claim is unconfirmed. ASOS has not endorsed it, and Snowflake told the BBC that its investigation continues and that it has so far found no breach of its platform. Help Net Security sees only an indirect link: the retailer uses Simon AI for marketing, a tool built on Snowflake. That link does not establish what data was touched.
The group wrote on Telegram, according to the same source, that payment data was left intact and that using the app carries no risk. That comes from the party claiming the attack and is also unverified.
The potential pool is large: 16.5 million active customers and more than 100 markets, per Help Net Security, plus more than 10 million Android downloads of the app. Those are not figures of people affected. ASOS did not say whether it will notify each customer or whether users in Mexico are among them, and it promised to update if anything changes.
