EBay Inc said that hackers raided its network three months ago, stealing some 145 million user records from a database in what is poised to go down as one of the biggest data breaches in history based on the number of accounts compromised.
It advised customers to change their passwords immediately, saying they were among the pieces of data stolen by cybercriminals who carried out the attack between late February and early March.
EBay spokeswoman Amanda Miller said late Wednesday that those passwords were encrypted and that the company had no reason to believe the hackers had broken the code that scrambled them.