UK police arrest man suspected of VTech toy hacking

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VTech InnoTab 3

15 December 2015

Police investigating the hacking of Chinese toy company VTech have made an arrest in the UK today.In the attack on 14 November, someone gained access to information about VTech customers, including names, e-mail addresses, birth dates, photos and weakly encrypted passwords, the company said.The information was stored in a database for its Learning Lodge app store, used by many of the company’s educational toys.

Later last month, VTech said the data breach affected around 4.8 million of its customers, but by early this month the figure had risen to 11.6 million, including 6.4 million children.

UK police arrested a 21-year-old man on suspicion of two offenses under the Computer Misuse Act: unauthorised access to a computer, and causing a computer to enable unauthorised access to data.

Police also seized electronic devices for forensic examination during the raid in Bracknell, a town to the West of London in an area known for its tech industry.

The arrest was made by officers from the South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) in an investigation with other agencies into the hacking of applications belonging to VTech, the unit said Tuesday.

The investigation is still in its early stages, the head of SEROCU’s cyber crime unit, Craig Jones, said.

IDG News Service

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