Children's electronic toy maker attacked by hackers

A company which specialises in electronic toys and educational material for children has revealed it has been the victim of a cyber attack.

VTech, which sells children's tablets, electronic learning toys and baby monitors, said its app store database, Learning Lodge, was hacked on November 14.

The app allows customers around the world to download apps, learning games, e-books and other educational content to their VTech products.

VTech has not confirmed how many customers were affected but it is thought parents and children's data such as names and email addresses were among the information accessed.

The company stressed it was "important to note that our customer database does not contain any credit card or banking information" nor social security numbers.

However it does contain what VTech desribed as a "general user profile information", such as "name, email address, encrypted password, secret question and answer for password retrieval, IP address, mailing address and download history".

In a statement on its website, VTech said: "Upon discovering the unauthorized access we immediately conducted a thorough investigation, which involved a comprehensive check of the affected site and implementation of measures to defend against any further attacks."