Dell Website Was Hacked, PC Maker Claims Nothing Was Stolen

Keep Calm and Reset Your Passwords. That's pretty much Dell's advice to customers that have registered an account over at its Dell.com website. It has revealed that it detected unauthorized activity on said site earlier this month that basically equated to someone trying to hack their way into the company's customer database. Nothing was taken, the company assures, but, just in case, it might be a good idea to reset your password anyway.

It isn't uncommon for companies to be the target of hacking activities. The larger you are, the larger the target on your back. And when you're one of the top three PC makers in the world, you also have one of the top three largest door signs challenging hackers to break through.

Sometimes those hackers are unsuccessful, sometimes they manage to break through. Sometimes they get away with gigabytes of critical personal information. Sometimes all they get are barely usable pieces of data. The latter is the best case scenario that Dell is trying to paint though, as always, you'll have to wonder what is PR and what is truth.

To sum it up, Dell is basically saying there is little to worry about because they have found no conclusive evidence that any data was extracted at all. And even if they did, hackers would only be able to get customer names, their email addresses, and hashed (basically unreadable and unusable) passwords. Curiously, credit card information or any other more sensitive information were not targeted by the intrusion.

In addition to those security steps, Dell has also retained a digital forensics firm and engaged law enforcement to investigate the incident further. It has already made a mandatory reset of customers' Dell.com password, which would explain the sudden notification these people might have just received in their emails. Dell advises users to do change their passwords anyway, especially if they use the same password for other accounts associated with the same email, which is often the case.