Asset management powerhouse Fidelity Investments has confirmed it suffered a data breach in which criminals stole sensitive information on tens of thousands of people.
The company revealed the news via a violation notice filed with the Maine Attorney General's Office, noting that between August 17 and 19, 2024, threat actors used two “newly established” customer accounts to access to the company's infrastructure.
“We detected this activity on August 19 and immediately took action to terminate access,” the company said in the letter. “An investigation was quickly launched with the help of external security experts,” he added. The investigation determined that the criminals obtained information “related to a small subset” of Fidelity customers and did not access anyone's accounts.
Identity theft monitoring
This “small subset” has exactly 77,099 customers, including 337 Maine residents. The letter does not detail the type of information stolen, but TechCrunch found a separate filing with the Massachusetts attorney general, which said hackers obtained people's Social Security numbers and driver's licenses, information more than enough to engage in phishing and identity theft. , or possibly even wire fraud.
To access the data, the criminals allegedly created two customer accounts and used them to submit fraudulent requests to an internal database, which contained images of documents belonging to Fidelity customers.
So far, there has been no evidence that the data has been misused, but Fidelity doesn't want to take any chances. All affected individuals are offered credit monitoring and identity restoration services, free of charge, for 24 months.
Fidelity Investments is a leading financial services company offering investment management, retirement planning, brokerage and wealth management services. The firm manages more than $4 trillion in assets for more than 40 million individual investors, institutions and financial advisors.
Fidelity provides access to mutual funds, ETFs, and a wide range of investment products.
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