Office website hacked: Passwords, addresses, phone numbers slurped

British shoe shop chain Office is the latest corp to cop to a computer security breach – one that's leaked names, addresses, phone numbers, emails and passwords of its customers.

The high-street name is refusing to say whether those web account passwords were stored in plaintext, or in a hashed or encrypted form. The firm would only refer The Reg and tweeting customers to its stock statement:

@sherwinrice All the information that we have regarding this matter is published here http://t.co/iwEXix6aoa

— OFFICE Shoes Help (@OFFICEShoesHelp) May 30, 2014

According to that statement, which was also emailed to customers, Office realised last week it was hacked, and confirmed the unauthorised access after investigations earlier this week. It said it had acted as quickly as possible to let users know.

No credit card, Paypal or bank details were slurped, we're told, and only accounts created before August 2013 were affected, possibly because the infiltrators managed to only pwn a single server.

The company claimed its website was still safe and secure to shop on as the hacked gear has been quarantined from the rest of its business.

“The server that was compromised was a server containing no live data and has been isolated,” Office stated.

This suggests the raided machine was a backup storage system or suchlike. It's possible passwords were stored in plaintext prior to August 2013 and are now hashed or encrypted, but we’ll update on that if and when the company comes clean on that.

In the meantime, Office has reset passwords so customers will need to come up with a new one the next time they get the urge to go shoe-shopping online. And of course, if you use the same password elsewhere, you better get busy changing it there as well. ®