If you use a Nook or are a Barnes & Noble customer, you may have opened your email inbox to find this warning.
Or perhaps you were unable to access eBooks on your Nook device or from your Nook app.
The company was hit by a massive cyberattack. The attack was so bad, they were forced to shut down their servers to fight it. B&N didn’t get specific about what went wrong, but the security experts at Bad Packets claimed the company had multiple VPN servers that did not have the proper security patches installed for a vulnerability. This vulnerability has been used to install ransomware.
Sources claimed the virus even took down registers at physical Barnes and Noble locations. Barnes & Noble said it didn’t believe payment information was compromised, but other information such as your name and email address and what kinds of books you’ve purchased could have been accessed.
Nook Books Inaccessible
The most notable problem was an inability to buy books or access books that had already been purchased. One of the major features of eBooks is that your library is stored in the cloud.
The company publicly apologized on Facebook, “We are continuing to experience a systems failure that is interrupting NOOK content. We are working urgently to get all NOOK services back to full operation. Unfortunately it has taken longer than anticipated, and we sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and frustration. Please be assured that there is no compromise of customer payment details which are encrypted and tokenized. We expect NOOK to be fully operational shortly and will post an update once systems are restored. Thank you for your patience.”
As of this writing, customers were still complaining that they were unable to access their purchased book.
Watch Out For Scammers
There’s a good chance that scammers will attempt to take advantage of this situation by sending phishing emails claiming to be related to this incident. They might ask for your log in and password or claim you need to supply our payment information.
Don’t fall for it. Don’t click on any links that show in emails. Go directly to Barnes and Noble’s website and check your account yourself.