More Than 100,000 DSW Customers’ Data Hacked

More than 100,000 customers of a shoe store chain probably have been affected by a cyber break-in of the company’s database, the Secret Service said Thursday.

Columbus, Ohio-based DSW Shoe Warehouse discovered the theft of credit card and personal shopping information March 4 and reported it to federal authorities, the firm said. DSW was alerted by a credit card company that noticed suspicious activity.

The firm’s announcement follows disclosure within the last month from two database brokers that intruders accessed personal information on more than 170,000 people and the disclosure last month from Bank of America that it had lost data tapes containing personal information on federal employees who used 1.2 million bank-issued cards.

At DSW, an outside contractor is evaluating the company’s network to determine how it was breached, said Kurt Douglass, special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Cincinnati office. The number of customers affected is unknown, but “it’s going to be in the hundreds of thousands,” Douglass said.

The information was stolen from a database for 103 of the chain’s 175 stores. Internet sales from the chain’s website were not affected, the company said.