Network Solutions Breach Affects 570,000

Web hosting provider Network Solutions revealed on Friday that the details of over half a million credit card and debit accounts have been stolen by hackers, after more than 4,000 of its hosted US e-commerce sites suffered a breach.

The hackers uploaded software that redirected customers' transactions to an outside server, which was in place from March 12 to June 8.

The "identified unauthorized code" may have been used to gain access to about 4,343 of Network Solution's more than 10,000 merchant websites, affecting a total of 573,928 cardholders, says the company.

Network Solutions has been working with law enforcement agencies to find out who is responsible for the breach and how it happened.

Though there are no signs that the affected cards have been misused so far, the company is urging all affected merchants to visit a newly created website where they can find more information regarding the breach.

The web host has offered to pay for any costs that may be involved in alerting the affected cardholders for merchants who used Network Solutions' e-commerce service.

Additionally, it is providing 12 months of free fraud-monitoring services to the affected cardholders.

"We feel terribly about it to burden them with the notification process, which can be kind of tricky because there is no one federal data breach statute," says Network Solutions spokeswoman Susan Wade.

The incident marks the second security intrusion the company has experienced this year. In late January, Network Solutions was hit with a Distributed Denial of Service attack, which caused some its hosted websites to go temporarily offline.