A 7-Eleven app was hacked and it resulted in customer having $510,000 stolen from them.
The 7-Eleven app that was the target of the hack was 7pay. This is an app that allows users to purchase items at the store with their credit cards and debit cards. It does this by providing them with a bar code to scan at the counter.
The problem here is that the 7pay app doesn’t have much in the way of security. The app lets users rest their passwords, but doesn’t require much in the way of confirmation. This includes simply providing it with the user’s email address, date of birth and phone number.
None of this information is particularly hard to obtain. The kicker is that the password reset system also allows users to send the email to a different address than the one tied to the account. This made it much too easy for hackers to start taking over accounts.
Following the 7-Eleven app hack, the company is already working to make things right. This includes suspending the app. It is also promising to reimburse the roughly 900 customers that had funds stolen by the hackers, reports ZDnet.
The Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is also calling out the 7-Eleven app for its poor design. The agency says that the company didn’t go along with proper financial guidelines when creating the app.
As of this writing, William White did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.
