Hershey warns of data breach following phishing attack; financial account data and credit card potentially compromised

The Hershey Company, US candy manufacturer of beloved sweets such as Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey’s chocolates, suffered a data breach impacting 2,214 individuals after an “unauthorized user” accessed several employee accounts in a phishing attack.

According to a data breach notification filed with the Attorney General’s office of Maine, the breach occurred somewhere between Sept 3 and 4 and impacted only a limited number of people.

Potentially compromised data “varied from person-to-person” and includes:

• First and last names
• Date of birth
• Contact information
• Driver’s license numbers
• Credential for online accounts
• Health and medical info
• Financial account info
• Debit or credit card data
• Access codes

The chocolate maker sent data breach notification letters to potentially impacted individuals on Friday and says that it is currently working alongside a forensics team and law enforcement to assess the impact of the security incident.

The company said the breach was promptly detected and that there is currently no evidence that any of the data “was acquired or misused” by the unauthorized party.

"Based on our investigation, which recently concluded, the unauthorized user may have had access to certain personal information of yours," the company said. "Although we have no evidence that any information was acquired or misused by the unauthorized user, we wanted to notify you of this incident out of an abundance of caution."

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