T-Mobile data breach exposed personal information of up to 2 million customers

Pierluigi Paganini August 24, 2018

T-Mobile today announced It has suffered a security breach that May have exposed personal information of up to 2 million T-mobile customers.

According to the telco giant, the incident affected its US servers on August 20,
leaked information includes customers’ name, billing zip code, phone number, email address, account number, and account type (prepaid or postpaid).
T-Mobile notified the security breach to the affected customers and via SMS message, letter in the mail, or a phone call.
“Our cyber-security team discovered and shut down an unauthorized access to certain information, including yours, and we promptly reported it to authorities. None of your financial data (including credit card information) or social security numbers were involved, and no passwords were compromised” reads the announcement published on the company’s website.
“However, you should know that some of your personal information may have been exposed, which may have included one or more of the following: name, billing zip code, phone number, email address, account number and account type (prepaid or postpaid).”

The Company excluded that the security breach may have exposed financial data such as credit card numbers.

In a blog post published by T-Mobile, the company explained that how its staff has detected and locked out the intruders on Monday, August 20.

At the time T-Mobile did not share details of the hack and did not provide Information on the extension of the incident.

A spokesperson for T-Mobile told Motherboard that the incident affected less than 3 percent of its 77 million customers.
The spokesperson added that the attack  was carried  out by hackers of “an international group.”
T-Mobile hack
The attackers managed to access T-Mobile servers through an API. The good news is that the API was not designed to provide access to financial data or other sensitive Information.
“We found it quickly and shut it down very fast.” Added the spokesperson.

T-Mobile reported the incident to law enforcement.

“We take the security of your information very seriously and have a number of safeguards in place to protect your personal information from unauthorized access,” T-Mobile said. “We truly regret that this incident occurred and are so sorry for any inconvenience this has caused you.”

The company is urging customers to contact its customer service through 611 for any information regarding the security breach.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – cybercrime, hacking)

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