Digital music distributor TuneCore revealed Friday that it was hacked. The security breach leaked some of its customers, which include millions of musicians, personal information though it does not appear as though the hack was able to access critical financial or music files.
TuneCore says that no music files were stolen, though the hackers might have taken names, email addresses, mailing address, account numbers and passwords that were stored in protected form. Complete financial information is never stored in house, but ancillary info like customers' billing addresses and addresses of banks could have been taken, while more personal information such as bank routing numbers, bank account numbers and the last four digits of credit cards was also lifted.
TuneCore uses a third party to process their credit card and banking transactions and according to the company the liaison between the parties was not breached.
"Based on our investigation, this process with our third party vendor was not compromised in the attack," a spokesperson told Billboard.
It could take weeks to sort out how much data was actually stolen from the TuneCore and of how much significance it will actually have considering how often companies are hacked. Since no music files were stolen there won't be any damaging leaks from the hack, though the financial information could be pieced together by some charismatic hackers who know their way around the banking system.
It is recommended that users immediately change their login info and if they use those same access codes, ditch them for other places that could be accessed by the hackers, especially banks.
TuneCore can take solace is knowing that it is not the only digital music and entertainment company that has been hacked. Customer information was accessed from RevebNation in Jan. 14, though no credit card info was leaked. Sony was the subject of two high profile hacks - first in 2011 when its PlayStation Network was breached and then last year when it thought North Korea was behind an attack on Sony Pictures and pulled The Interview from theaters in addition a lot of internal memos and communications that were leaked to the public.
