Since Saturday, users of Barnes and Noble’s Nook e-reader and the Nook apps for Android, etc. have been unable to sync their readers to the company’s system. What that means is that, aside from titles stored locally on readers/tablets/phones, customers cannot access the books they’ve already purchased.
The Nook problem is part of a much larger, system-wide IT failure at B&N. Ordering and inventory searches were down at every store over the weekend, even cash registers were malfunctioning. A reddit thread of B&N employees gives an idea of some of the problems. An example from the thread:
Apparently a legit Virus/Trojan (I'm not developer savvy with the lingo) got in to the network at corporate and filtered out to effect stores, nooks, everything. The registers when booted down come back up with some kind of message that is apparently horrific enough my boss wouldn't repeat it to me and was instructed not to. (Would love someone to leak what it said.) But if anything is shut down... When it boots back up its infected with the virus.
Bookmaster can only search by isbn. No orders can be made. Receiving is a mess. Registers only half work. Sales aren't ringing correctly. PDTs were on the fritz.
That and other messages assume the company is the victim of a malware attack. They are also the victim of incredibly bad PR advice. From the time of the first failures on Saturday through yesterday afternoon, Barnes and Noble remained completely silent about the crash, with no public notice to customers. People, as you might expect, began to notice.
Finally, yesterday and today, customers began receiving emails announcing the problem:
“We sincerely apologize for the present disruption to your NOOK service. We are experiencing an interruption to our system that has caused us to restore our server backups. Unfortunately, while this is underway, NOOK customers are unable to access the library held on these servers. The system will be restored as soon as possible, at which time your library will be made available again. You will be receiving a reward to use online or in our stores as soon as the service is back to normal. We sincerely regret any inconvenience this has caused you.”
It is rather an inconvenience not being able to access the property you’ve paid for, but merely “inconvenienced” customers may not be the company’s biggest worry. Despite the assurance on the B&N website’s Support page that
“there is no compromise of customer payment details which are encrypted and tokenized,”
at least one commenter on GoodEReader’s story on the crash has reported an unauthorized charge on the card he uses for his Nook account, though he does not know currently if the charge was related to Barnes and Noble’s difficulties.
Although Publisher’s Lunch reported yesterday that the company’s internal systems were back up, the Nook system is still not functioning as of this afternoon.
There are a number of questions that need to be answered here (other than, “Hey, where are my damn books?”). Who might have launched the attack and why? More than one person has noted that the attack coincided with Amazon’s Prime Day, launching predictable speculation. When might customers expect to access their purchases and how can the company be sure credit information is secure?
If you have a B&N or Nook account, there is little to be done at present, other than to check the credit card you use on that account for unauthorized use.
DO NOT REBOOT YOUR DEVICE OR RE-INSTALL APP
despite the company’s Support page telling you to do so. This will blank even the books stored locally on your reader/tablet/phone in many cases.
The physical and online bookstore chain was acquired by the hedge fund Elliott Advisors last summer after a long period of uncertainty about its future. This hack/crash/whatever, and management’s lack of transparency with customers and authors (see shiobe’s comment below) could damage the company’s reputation just as they’re trying to regain ground.