ATLANTA — The Atlanta Hawks have confirmed a Tuesday report from CNet.com, regarding the alleged hacking of the team's online store.
Here's the Hawks statement provided to 11Alive News:
"We take these matters of security and privacy extremely seriously. Yesterday, we were alerted the host site for HawksShop.com was subject to an isolated attack. Upon receiving that information, we disabled all payment and checkout capabilities to prevent any further incident.
"At this stage of the investigation, we believe that less than a handful of purchases on HawksShop.com were affected. We are continuing to investigate and will provide updates as needed."
The CNet report cited a lead forensic analyst who asserted the team's site (HawksShop.com ... which is temporarily down, due to maintenance) had been infected with malware "designed to steal credit card information."
The same analyst, according to the report, had originally spotted the malware infiltration on April 20 and noted possible theft of names, addresses and credit card numbers involving Hawks patrons.
According to CNet, HawksShop.com attracts 7 million online visits per year, with the club's official Twitter account entertaining 1.22 million followers.
For the CNet report, the forensic analyst theorized that "third-party tools" utilized plug-ins on HawksShop.com to gain intimate access into the site.
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