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 have been hacked leading to the exposure of their personal information including full names, numbers telephone numbers and e-mail addresses.

Over the past few weeks, alleged Zivame data has been sold by hackers on several forums. Three clients told TechCrunch that their information matched sample data shared by a broker. The information included their phone numbers, email addresses and shipping addresses.

One of the sample data shared by the broker also included details of individual purchases, but did not contain payment information.

The broker told TechCrunch that it was selling the data on behalf of a master hacker. The data was later taken offline, apparently at the hacker’s request.

On Friday, TechCrunch informed India’s IT emergency response team CERT-In that sample data is available. “We are already taking the appropriate action with the relevant authority,” CERT-In said in response.

Zivame declined to comment on the apparent breach when reached by TechCrunch. When contacted via LinkedIn, Monish Kaul, Zivame’s Chief Technology and Product Officer, opened and read our message, but did not respond.

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

“The true extent of the threat and the full set of disclosed details remain to be determined,” Harikumar told TechCrunch.

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