A cup of Joe doesn't come cheap these days if it ends up costing you your personal identity.
The convenient Starbucks mobile payment app for Apple's iPhone iOS is stealing the spotlight in a mix of recent cyber heists. A recent security report claims cyber hackers could easily uncover customers' geolocation data and password information stored in the iOS app, which could result in unauthorized purchases on credit cards,
Computerworld reported.
Security researcher Daniel Wood said in a research note, "There are multiple instances of the storage of clear-text credentials that can be recovered and leveraged for unauthorized usage of a user's account on the malicious user's own device or online."
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Starbucks executives confirmed that the popular mobile payment app has been storing usernames, email addresses and passwords in clear text, which allows passwords and usernames to be extracted when plugging the phone into a PC, instead of the data being encrypted, according to Computerworld.
In response,
Starbucks Chief Information Officer Curt Garner wrote in an open letter to customers, "We take these types of concerns seriously and have added several safeguards to protect the information you share with us. To protect the integrity of these added measures, we are unable to share technical details but can assure you that they sufficiently address the concerns raised in the research report."
The company is accelerating the deployment of an update for the app, which Garner said is expected "to be ready soon."
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told The Seattle Times earlier this month that Starbucks is in the position to benefit from consumers' growing use of online and mobile devices with their mobile payment app.
In fact, more than $1.3 billion in total Starbucks card loads in the United States and Canada were handled "efficiently," Schultz added.
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