HauteLook

In mid 2018 the online fashion retailer HauteLook owned by Nordstrom suffered a significant security breach. An unauthorized party gained access to the company database resulting in the exposure of sensitive user information. The incident was part of a larger series of hacks involving multiple platforms where the stolen data was subsequently offered for sale on dark web marketplaces. The breach involved millions of accounts and the compromised data included hashed passwords using the bcrypt algorithm which provides a higher level of security than standard MD5 but remains vulnerable to offline cracking attempts.