The database of more than 1 million customers was exposed online by ‘SCUF Gaming’, a subsidiary of Corsair that develops high-end gamepads for Xbox, PS4, and PC. The incident led to the exposure of clients’ names, payment info, contact info, repair tickets, order histories, and other sensitive information. Other data belonging to the company’s staff and internal API keys were also compromised as a result.

The data was left unprotected for two days before being discovered by the security researcher, Bob Diachenko who reported the same to Scuf Gaming. The team led by the researcher found the data on the web without any password protection or authentication.

The database was taken down by the company in less than two hours of being notified. Meanwhile, bot crawlers got enough time to locate the exposed database and a ransom note was found demanding 0.3 BTC from the company. The note says that the data had been downloaded by the cybercriminals, however, no such action is being detected by the systems. “Your Database is downloaded and backed up on our secured servers. To recover your lost data, Send 0.3 BTC to our BitCoin Address and Contact us by eMail.” The note read.

Experts are of the belief that the involved criminals did not get enough time to delete or encrypt the data present in the database, hence, it’s unlikely that they would have been able to download it either. However, SCUF clients and staff could face a risk of phishing attacks, identity theft, and fraud by the cybercriminals who might have downloaded some pieces of

the leaked database.

In a conversation with Comparitech, a spokesperson for Corsair, parent company to SCUF gaming told, “…Once notified, we identified the root cause of this exposure and secured the database within two hours. While investigating Mr. Diachenko’s warning, we also discovered that a bot had connected to the database’s server and placed a ransom note there. We have no evidence that either the bot or any other actor was able to misappropriate customer data.

This issue was specific to one system, being operated off-site due to work-from-home precautions resulting from the current COVID-19 pandemic.”

To stay on a safer side, SCUF Gaming customers are advised to keep an eye for any suspicious activity in regard to their bank accounts as scammers who were to able gather whatever bits of information they could, are likely to attempt targeted phishing attacks.