Discord says customer service provider hack exposed user IDs, support chats
Discord has confirmed an incident in which hackers compromised one of its third-party customer service providers, accessing the personally identifiable data of some users.
Image by Cybernews.
Discord has confirmed that hackers had managed to compromise one of its third-party customer service providers, accessing the personally identifiable data of some users.
The data belongs to people who had contacted Discord through its Customer Support and/or Trust & Safety teams. The company believes that the goal behind the hack was to “extort a financial ransom from Discord.”
Once Discord became aware of the situation, it revoked the provider’s access to its ticketing system and engaged with law enforcement.
Yet, malicious actors managed to access a trove of personal data, including a small number of government‑ID images from passports or driver's licenses, in case a user had previously contacted Discord to appeal an age determination. According to Discord, other data includes:
- Name, Discord username, email, and other contact details if provided to Discord customer support
- Limited billing information, such as payment type, the last four digits of your credit card, and purchase history, if associated with your account
- IP addresses
- Messages with its customer service agents
- Limited corporate data (training materials, internal presentations)
More from Cybernews
Sainsbury’s installs more facial rec tech in stores: Should shoppers be worried?
"Phantom squatting” uses AI hallucinated domains for cyber attacks
What they’re doing to gamers is a robbery in broad daylight
Irish parliament expands Microsoft use, despite the EU’s efforts to ditch it
Can government AI actually scrub UAP footage from the internet?
The EU and Apple CEO Tim Cook held "constructive" talks after their Siri AI dispute in Europe
However, the company assures that credit card numbers, passwords, or messages or activity on Discord beyond user communication with support were not stolen.
It is not yet clear how many users were impacted or which third-party provider was breached. However, we already have a potential threat actor behind the hack – the Scattered Lapsus$ Hunters (SLH) claimed the attack, saying that they hacked a Zendesk instance used by Discord for customer support, according to Bleeping Computer.
The company has notified data protection authorities and is working with law enforcement. It has also reviewed its threat detection systems and security controls for third-party support providers.
Users are advised to stay vigilant for unsolicited messages and suspicious communications.
All impacted users will receive an email notification from Discord – the company says it will not contact you via phone, but using a special email address at [email protected].
Earlier in August, malicious actors claimed they had access to billions of user Discord messages and a trove of voice sessions, files, and user profiles, obtained via scraping.