Adidas closes key sites after sophisticated cyber attack

Adidas has become the latest big name vendor to suffer a cyber attack, after being forced to take some of its sites offline to safeguard customer data.

The German sportswear company said in a statement on its news stream on Sunday that it uncovered the attack a few days earlier.

"On November 3 2011 the Adidas Group found out that it was the target of a sophisticated, criminal cyber attack. Our preliminary investigation has found no evidence that any consumer data is impacted," the firm said.

"But, while we continue our thorough forensic review, we have taken down affected sites, including adidas.com, reebok.com, miCoach.com, adidas-group.com and various local e-commerce shops, in order to protect visitors to our sites."

Adidas said that it had put in place "a number of additional data security measures" since discovering the incident, although it did not reveal what these were.

G-Data security evangelist Eddy Willems blamed the paucity of cyber crime law enforcers on the recent rise in attacks against big brands.

"Cyber criminals can be very difficult to track and prosecute. Security vendors and local authorities around the world should be working together to stop this happening," he added.

"The good thing is that Adidas, unlike many recent cyber crime victims, seems to be acting quickly and has security in mind. The hack appears to be only to the web site and not the databases, which suggests that no customer data has been compromised."

The Serious Organised Crime Agency revealed at the London Conference on Cyberspace that it plans to further collaborate with agencies in other countries including Russia on catching cyber criminals, although the general view from law enforcement at the show was that cross-jurisdictional co-operation is slow and painful.