Dallas-based luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus has become the latest target of hackers as they managed to access part of a company’s database that contained the personally identifiable information of 64,000 customers.
The hackers have access to customer names, contact information, dates of birth and gift card numbers, according to a data breach notification letter posted on the Office of the Maine Attorney General.
“Promptly after learning of the issue, we took steps to contain it, including by disabling access to the relevant database platform,” the company said in the letter. “We also launched an investigation with the assistance of leading cybersecurity experts and notified law enforcement.”
Neiman Marcus declined an interview request from The Dallas Morning News. The company also declined to share how many Texans were affected by the breach.
The data breach occurred on April 14 and was discovered on May 24. The hacker gained access to a cloud storage database platform used by Neiman Marcus provided by cloud company Snowflake. Snowflake is the same company that fell victim to another data breach that recently affected Ticketmaster.
Neiman Marcus said gift cards will still be valid and that it’s going to improve its technology to protect its client information, according to the letter.
Back in 2021, Neiman Marcus got in contact with 4.6 million customers when the company announced that it experienced a similar data breach that revealed information like credit card numbers. In 2017, the company also paid $1.6 million to settle a class-action lawsuit revolving around another cyber attack which exposed the info of 350,000 customers.
A well-known hacker, known as ‘Sp1d3r,’ claimed responsibility for the current data breach and that they gave Neiman Marcus a chance to pay for the data ahead of it being sold online for $150,000.
“Neiman Marcus not interest in paying to secure customer data,” they said on a message board. “We give them opportunity to pay and they decline. Now we sell. Enjoy!”
To prevent hackers from taking advantage of customers’ private information, Neiman Marcus said it encourages its customers to use a free credit report and to closely watch account statements.
Neiman Marcus is the latest in a long line of Dallas-based companies hacked in the past year. Others like AT&T, Frontier Communications, UT Southwestern and many more have recently been a part of a data breach. The city of Dallas and Tarrant County have also recently been hacked.
Dallas billionaire Mark Cuban’s public email was hacked last weekend.
