Car insurance provider Geico was hit with a data breach and the attackers managed to steal the driver’s licenses for policyholders for over a month.
Geico, the second-largest car insurance company in the United States, has over 17 million policies for more than 28 million vehicles.
Geico has filed a data breach notification with the California Attorney General’s office stating that, for over a month, threat actors were abusing an online sales portal to gain access to policy holder’s driver’s license numbers.
According to the breach notification, the company has determined that between January 21, 2021 and March 1, 2021, fraudsters used information acquired from elsewhere – to obtain unauthorized access to the customer’s driver’s license number through the online sales system of their website.
However, it was not specified what information was required to access the online sale’s portal.
Geico believes that the threat actors plan to use the driver’s license number to apply for unemployment benefits under the policy holder’s name.
They stated that this information could be used to fraudulently apply for unemployment benefits in the policyholder’s name. The company warns that in case the users receive any mailings from the state’s unemployment agency/department, please review them carefully and contact that agency/department if there is any chance fraud is being committed.
On being aware of the breach, Geico immediately secured the website and added additional safeguards to prevent further fraud or illegal activities.
All the affected policyholders are being offered a free one-year subscription to an identity protection service.
