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U.K. police has apprehended a 21 year-old man in the case of the VTech hacking.
BOSTON TRANSCRIPT – A British man was arrested for VTech Hacking connections today, media reports inform.
The man is a 21 year-old and he is suspected of being responsible for the hacking of the Japanese toy maker VTech Holdings Ltd that took place in November.
The man was arrested in Bracknell, a town 30 miles away from London. He remains unnamed and few other details were provided by the police.
This security breach led to the disclosure of personal information of 6.4 million children from around the world.
VTech announced in late November that an unauthorized party had accessed its database and had stolen the personal details, including head shots, of about 6.4 million children and 4.9 million adults. The database also houses e-mail addresses, names, passwords, mailing addresses and download histories.
The information was stored on VTech’s Learning Lodge application, which allows the downloading of learning games, e-books and other kinds of learning materials. However, it does not include credit card, details because such information is not stored on this learning application.
More than half of the accounts are from North America, as this is the company’s biggest market, which brought it about $450 million in revenue.
Following the event, many people are asking themselves how safe children really are at a time when various devices ask for their personal information in order to be allowed access.
The British police have confiscated several electrical items from the man and they are going to analyze them. But VTech is not getting away scot free either. The company will be held to account for how it protects personal data by an independent agency that oversees the protection of data.
The investigation will be joined by the British Information Commission’s Office, as over 1 million accounts were from Britain.
Cybercrimes are becoming more and more prevalent and they have started to seriously affect businesses around the world. This is why Craig Jones, the head of the cybercrime unit at SEROCU in Britain has said that he will investigate this complex case thoroughly complex cases such as this one.
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