Hacking of Hong Kong's VTech may prove worst cybersecurity breach of 2015 in Asia
Attack exposed over 6 million children's profiles at the educational toy maker
The massive hacking of customer accounts at Hong Kong-based educational toy maker VTech, which left more than six million children's profiles exposed, may have been the worst cybersecurity breach in the Asia-Pacific region this year.
"If we made a top-five list today, VTech would place first for the Asia-Pacific based on the reported number of accounts affected," Forrester Research senior analyst Heidi Shey said.
The VTech incident last month compromised 4.8 million parent accounts and 6.4 million related children's profiles on the company's Learning Lodge app store customer database and Kid Connect servers.
Also affected were 235,708 parent and 227,705 children accounts at the company's Planet VTech online games platform.
It was worse than the data breach at Japanese online shopping mall operator Rakuten in April, when the identification and passwords of about five million customers were stolen.
VTech chairman Allan Wong Chi-yun said he blamed an "orchestrated and sophisticated attack on our network" for the incident, which ranks as the largest known targeted hack on children's data worldwide.