Mozilla temporary closed its online e-store late Tuesday after getting out that the firm it hired to run the backend operations of the company's e-tailing business had suffered a security breach.
It was cryptic whether the vendor, St. Louis-based GatewayCDI, which bills itself as a "promotional articles benefactor and allurement company," notified Mozilla or whether the browser maker found out about the breach some other way.
"Today, Mozilla apparent that GatewayCDI, the third-party bell-ringer entrusted to run the backend of the Mozilla Store, suffered a security breach," Mozilla said in a warning on its Web site. "Once notified, we took the actual preventive step of shutting down the Mozilla store to ensure that no added users could be compromised."
Mozilla as well took the all-embracing copy of its e-store offline as a precaution, although that accomplishment is maintained by an abstracted partner.
Late Tuesday, both store displayed letters that they were "closed for maintenance;" neither message, however, spelled out the reason.
The store advertise promotional items, such as T-shirts, backpacks, coffee mugs and abrasion pads emblazoned with aggregation logos, as able-bodied as the Firefox browser on CD.
Mozilla's advertisement did not detail the extent of the breach, what advice hackers ability accept accessed or stolen, or how the aperture happened. GatewayCDI was not accessible late Tuesday, and there was no notice on its site that it had sustained a breach.
According to Mozilla, its online store may be shuttered for some time. "The store will alone be reinstated already we accept a satisfactory affirmation of advancing login security and data privacy," the company said.
This situation was the first for Mozilla, an open-source developer that prides itself on its operational transparency.
