Over half a million credit card details exposed

Over half a million credit card details may have been stolen after the servers of US firm Network Solutions were hacked.

The web hosting company acknowledged in a statement that approximately 4,343 of its merchant websites had been breached due to unauthorised codes in the servers, which in turn may have been used to transfer data.

Network Solutions admitted that the code could have copied 573,928 cardholder's transactions between 12 March and 8 June this year.

In a statement, the company said: "At this point, we have no reports or other reasons to believe that any credit card account information has been misused."

The company is working with a credit reporting agency to contact those who may have been affected and has set up a website for merchants and customers to help them deal with the problem.

The statement concluded: "We are deeply sorry for any concern or inconvenience this may cause our merchants or their customers."

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.