T-Mobile says data breach affects more than 40 million people

[Evo]

​ Security Alert

​ Millions of T-Mobile customers’ information reportedly exposed in cybersecurity incident.

​ Oh great! What is happening? Sensitive data of 47.8 million current, former, or prospective T-Mobile customers is reportedly for sale online. This information includes Social Security numbers, dates of birth, customer names, and driver’s license details. https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/tech/t-mobile-data-breach/index.html

 

[Astronuc]

A report on Gizmodo - A Notorious Hacker Gang Claims to Be Selling Data on 70 Million AT&T Subscribers
https://gizmodo.com/a-notorious-hacker-gang-claims-to-be-selling-data-on-70-1847527860

AT&T has denied the allegations/claims.

A prolific hacker gang claims to be selling data on 70 million AT&T customers, the likes of which would appear to include names, phone numbers, social security numbers, DOBs, home addresses, and more.

On Thursday, RestorePrivacy broke the news that ShinyHunters, a well-known threat actor, was advertising the apparent database on RaidForums, a popular dark web marketplace. The cybercriminals are asking for $1 million for the entire database, and are selling segments of the data for $30k apiece.

The telecom has denied that the data is legitimate.

Let's see where this goes.

 

[Vanadium 50]

T-Mobile is at 53 million., It also includes former and "prospective" customers. The "prospective" concerns me, as it suggests that people who do not think this applies to them because they are not T-Mobile customers may be wrong.

 

[Fervent Freyja]

T-Mobile is at 53 million., It also includes former and "prospective" customers. The "prospective" concerns me, as it suggests that people who do not think this applies to them because they are not T-Mobile customers may be wrong.

“Prospective” customers likely refers to the people that did not pass credit checks and were not able to become customers or for some reason pulled out/did not sign contracts after the checks were done. Which makes sense, as they would not only have that information on past and present customers, but also the people that did not become customers after the information was processed. “Prospective” is being used in a tactful manner here and implies the company is hoping some situation changing and them becoming customers one day. I doubt that it’s including anyone else outside of that.

Prospective customers might include:
-Anyone that attempted to open a contract but was rejected on account of a poor credit score (Prospective, credit scores improve- subject to change)
-Anyone that attempted to open a contract but their identify was unverifiable or flagged as fraudulent (Prospective, they may find identification or smooth out identity issues- subject to change)
-Anyone that went through the identity and credit check and for some reason decided last minute not to continue with a service/left their cart without completing the process (Prospective, they might come back to us- subject to change)
-Anyone who had an account opened fraudulently in their name and did not become customers/Account was flagged (Prospective, we are a big company and this actual person might become a customer- subject to change)

I would wager that many of T-mobiles prepaid customers had initially attempted to get a contract and they should be included.

T-Mobile recently bought out the service that I use, Sprint. I was alarmed and just checked. I found that other companies that T-Mobile owns isn’t included in the list. It looks like the data was pulled directly from whatever system they use for identity and credit checks, which would be less complex than the system they use for customer accounts. Probably some simple third party system that various companies use for identity and credit checks- easily hacked. Essentially, anyone that clicked the process button after filling out the identity and check form on the T-mobile site or processed in store should be worried.

All of these data leaks are driving me crazy.