The Egyptian-born ride-hailing company, SWVL, has recently reported a security breach in their systems.
In an email sent to its customers, first reported by Gadgets Africa, the company said their systems were compromised and only realized the breach on July 3.
Customer data was compromised including the email addresses, names, and phone numbers. The breach did not affect other personal data like payment information and passwords.
Someone "accessed" the SWVL system illegally. pic.twitter.com/8mDJEtXGkJ
— Adam Maina ™ (@AdamMaina_) July 6, 2020
SWVL says they launched an investigation immediately after the realization to pinpoint the cause of the breach. They have since taken several measures to ensure the safety of their customers as highlighted below;
- Regeneration of all access keys to both their systems and infrastructure
- Signed out all customers from accounts
- Reviewed all access privileges to systems
- Reviewing all firewall and access controls to infrastructure
- Strengthening infrastructure to increase security and resistance to attacks
The company advises all customers to update their SWVL account’s passwords. In case the same password has been used elsewhere, ensure you change passwords on those accounts as well. Password managers help a lot with that.
SWVL also advises its customers to watch out for scammers who may try to call or text them and ask for personal details.
“The SWVL team wishes to apologize to you for this unauthorized security breach,” the company said.
The company hasn’t specified how many customers were affected, but it seems the issue affected all of their customers. Investigations are still underway, says SWVL.
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