BEIJING, Aug. 24 (Xinhuanet) -- A security breach that resulted in the theft of confidential information about more than a million users went unreported for five days by Monster.com, a company executive informed media on Thursday.

By the time the U.S.-based job-search website shut down the illegal operation, run from two server computers at a Web-hosting company in the Ukraine, the names and confidential contact information of some 1.3 million job seekers had been stolen, revealed Patrick Manzo, vice president of compliance and fraud prevention for Monster Worldwide Inc. in a phone interview.

Manzo said Monster first learned of the problem on Aug. 17, when investigators with Internet security company Symantec Corp. told Monster that it was under attack.

"In terms of figuring out what the issue was, that was a relatively quick process," he said. "The other issue is you want to make sure exactly what you are dealing with."

His security team spent the weekend investigating, located the rogue servers, and got the Web-hosting company to shut them down some time either late in the evening on Aug. 20, or early in the morning of Aug. 21, he said.

Monster first told its customers about the data loss on Aug. 22 in a notice posted on its home page, www.monster.com.

It warned them that their contact data might have been stolen and the thieves had already sent spam to some Monster users asking for personal financial information and trying to get them to download malicious software.

Monster then announced on Thursday that names and contact information of some 1.3 million job seekers had been stolen.

(Agencies)