Online clothing retailer ASOS is investigating a suspected cyberattack after customers received a mobile alert that appeared to threaten the company’s IT department with a data release.

“ASOS HACKED,” the headline of the notification read.

“Dear Asos DPO [data protection officer] and IT, we have fully compromised the Snowflake instance,” the push notification said.

Snowflake is a cloud platform that allows companies to host, analyse and manage their data and is used by many major businesses including Canva, the New York Stock Exchange, Disney and OpenAI, according to its website.

A data protection officer is a position in companies tasked with safeguarding customers’ information.

“Engage with us, or we will leak it,” the alert said.

It provided a Telegram link to a channel which then referred to other channels. At the time of writing, they each had only a few hundred subscribers.

In a statement, ASOS said it was investigating “unauthorised activity involving third-party platforms” used to communicate with customers, and had taken “immediate action to restrict access”.

“Basic personal information including name and contact details may have been accessed,” it said.

“However, we do not believe that any payment-card information or account passwords have been impacted.”

The London-headquartered ASOS has more than 17 million customers in more than 150 countries, and made $4.75 billion (£2.5 billion) in revenue last year and an operating loss of almost $403 million (£212 million).

ASOS shares on the London Stock Exchange fell as much as 15 per cent on Tuesday.

UK law requires companies to report any personal data breaches within 72 hours after discovering a breach.

A spokesperson for Snowflake Inc. said it found no compromise of its platform. “We take customer privacy and security very seriously,” they said in an emailed statement. “The investigation is ongoing, and we will provide further updates as soon as more information becomes available.”

with Bloomberg

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