Avis, a major car rental company, is informing hundreds of thousands of consumers that a cyberattack in August took their driver’s license numbers and other information.
This is contained in the letter filed with the California Office of the Attorney General seen by Newsng on Monday.
The Maine Office of the Attorney General (OAG) disclosed that 299,006 people were affected by the incident in a breach notification letter.
Avis claimed that between August 3 and August 6, 2024, an unauthorised third party accessed client information by breaking into one of its business apps.
Avis recently notified its customers that their financial information (credit or debit card numbers, account numbers, dates of birth, names, addresses, and driver’s license numbers) may have been compromised in the incident.
“It is always a good idea to remain vigilant against threats of identity theft or fraud. You can do this by regularly reviewing and monitoring your account statements and credit history for any signs of unauthorized transactions or activity. You can contact the credit reporting agencies if you suspect any unauthorized activity,” Avis stated.
The attached letter does not mention any employee as the reason for the occurrence, even though the notice characterises the breach as the consequence of “insider wrongdoing.”
The type of the breach was not disclosed by Avis, and there is still little information available about the incident. An email seeking comment regarding the incident was not answered by an Avis representative.
The automobile rental company said that the stolen information includes customer names, mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, date of birth, credit card numbers and expiration dates, and driver’s license numbers in a data breach report it submitted with Iowa’s attorney general late last week. Why Avis stored this private client data in a way that made it vulnerable to hacking is yet unknown.
Following the incident, Avis claimed to have “worked with cyber security experts” to develop a plan to strengthen its security measures.
“Since the incident occurred, we have worked with cybersecurity experts to develop a plan to enhance security protections for impacted business applications.
“In addition, we have taken steps to deploy and implement additional safeguards onto our systems and are actively reviewing our security monitoring and controls to enhance and fortify the same,” read the statement by Avis.
We earlier reported that following a breach last week, energy giant, Halliburton, has revealed that hackers “accessed and exfiltrated information” from its computers.
