Reliance’s Zivame customers say their accounts were hacked

Some customers of Zivame, an Indian online women’s intimate apparel store owned by Reliance Retail, have complained that their accounts were hacked, leading to the exposure of their personal information, including their full names, phone numbers and email addresses.

Over the past few weeks, alleged data from Zivame has been sold by hackers on multiple forums. Three customers told TechCrunch that their information matches the data sample being shared by a broker. The information included their phone numbers, email addresses and shipment addresses.

One of the data samples the broker shared also included details about individual purchases — but does not contain payment-related information.

The broker told TechCrunch that they were selling the data on behalf of a primary hacker. The data was pulled offline later, apparently at the hacker’s request.

TechCrunch informed India’s computer emergency response team CERT-In about the availability of data samples on Friday. “We are already in process of taking appropriate action with the concerned authority,” CERT-In said in reply.

Zivame declined to comment on the apparent breach when reached by TechCrunch. When reached via LinkedIn, Zivame chief technology and product officer Monish Kaul opened and read our message, but did not respond.

Nandakishore Harikumar, founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup Technisanct, which first reported the availability of the exposed data on May 11, reviewed some of the data samples. Harikumar said his company found that through manual verification of 50 randomly selected email addresses and phone numbers from the dump that the data belonged to Zivame customers.

“The true extent of the threat and the complete set of leaked details are yet to be determined,” Harikumar told TechCrunch.

Founded in 2011, Zivame offers a range of women’s innerwear. The Bengaluru-based startup raised a total of $69.2 million in funding, per publicly available data. Reliance Retail, a subsidiary of Indian oil-to-telecom conglomerate Reliance Industries and the largest retailer in the South Asian nation in terms of revenues, acquired Zivame in 2020.