A day after Zomato’s database was hacked and the details of 17 million people were compromised, the company stated in a press release that the hacker was cooperating with them. They said that the hack was done to alert them of the loopholes in their security, which they are working on closing.
The company said that the hacker’s main request was to “run a healthy bug bounty program for security researchers.”
We are introducing a bug bounty program on Hackerone very soon. With that assurance, the hacker has in turn agreed to destroy all copies of the stolen data and take the data off the dark web marketplace. The marketplace link which was being used to sell the data on the dark web is no longer available.Zomato Blog
Zomato said that the hack made the company realise the need to address all security concerns in a timely and responsible manner. They also stated that they will now collaborate with more ethical hackers to make the community safer for their users.
They also notified users of what data was exposed after the hack and asked them to change their passwords to continue using their accounts like they did before the hack.
Please note that only 5 data points were exposed – user IDs, Names, Usernames, Email addresses, and Password Hashes with salt. No other information was exposed to anyone (we have a copy of the ‘leaked’ database with us). Your payment information is absolutely safe, and there’s no need to panic.
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