Hackers reportedly broke into and installed password-stealing programs on a number of servers belonging to insurance giant The Hartford, according to a ComputerWorld report.
The 200-year-old, 28,000 employee strong company sent a letter of warning to some 300 employees, contractors and a small number of customers.
“It was a very small incident,” said company spokesperson, Debora Raymond concerning the breach that allegedly affected less than 10 customers.
The piece of malware believed to have delivered this attack was the W32-Qakbot Trojan. Of the many servers it targeted, some were Citrix servers which employees use for remote access to IT systems. The Qakbot has been around since 2009 according to Symantec. It installs itself on a server, covering its tracks as it goes and opening backdoors that hackers later use to access the network.
The report claims that the attack took place between Feb. 22 and 28 and only affects individuals that logged into one of the infected servers between those dates.
According to the letter sent from company attorney Debra Hampson, the company admits that personally identifiable information could have been captured, but contends that there is no reason to believe that any of this data has been or will be misused.
Despite this, in a move that has become commonplace as far as data breaches go, the company has offered to pay for two years of credit monitoring for all those affected.
