Authorities in the UK have arrested a man in connection with November’s data breach at VTech on suspicion of “unauthorized access to computer to facilitate the commission of an offence”.
The South East Regional Organised Crime Unit (SEROCU) announced that they had arrested a 21-year-old man in Bracknell, a small town that is 32 miles west of London.
“Cyber criminality is affecting more and more business around the world and we continue to work with our partners to thoroughly investigate, often very complex cases,” commented Craig Jones, head of the Cyber Crime Unit at SEROC.
“We are still at the early stages of the investigation and there is still much work to be done. We will continue to work closely with our partners to identify those who commit offences and hold them to account.”
The specialist electronic toys and technology company was purportedly hacked to demonstrate its poor online security, the perpetrator allegedly claimed in an interview with Motherboard.
However, it is currently unknown whether the 21-year-old man who was arrested is the same person who informed the online news provider that VTech had been compromised.
What is clear is that Motherboard knew of the data breach before the toy tech company did – in fact, it was the former who alerted the latter to the attack.
No credit or debit card information was stolen, although data that was accessed included names, email addresses, mailing addresses, download history and encrypted passwords.
In total, up to 10 million VTech customers and users – i.e. parents and their children – from around the world have been affected by the incident.
“We are deeply shocked by this orchestrated and sophisticated attack on our network,” said Allan Wong, chairman and group CEO of VTech at the start of December.
‘We would like to offer our sincere apologies for any worry caused by this incident. We are taking all necessary steps to ensure that our users can continue to enjoy our products and services, safe in the knowledge that their data is secure.”
