January 1, Hackers Steal Data from 37 Million Wireless Customers

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY…
1973: U.S. President Richard Nixon announces an accord has been reached to end the Vietnam War.

T-Mobile said a “bad actor” stole personal information from about 37 million customers in a data breach in November, the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The wireless carrier said it first identified the breach on Jan. 5. The unidentified hacker (or hackers) obtained the data on or about Nov. 25 through a single Application Programming Interface.

The hacker accessed a “limited set of customer account data” — including names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and birthdates.

After becoming aware of the breach, T-Mobile said it “promptly commenced an investigation with external cybersecurity experts” and was “able to trace the source of the malicious activity and stop it” within a day’s time.

The investigation found that “customer accounts and finances were not put at risk directly by this event,” T-Mobile said. No credit card information, passwords, Social Security numbers, government ID numbers, or other financial account information was exposed in the breach, T-Mobile said.

“Our investigation is still ongoing, but the malicious activity appears to be fully contained at this time, and there is currently no evidence that the bad actor was able to breach or compromise our systems or our network,” T-Mobile said in its SEC filing.

The company noted in the filing that is has notified law enforcement and federal agencies, which it did not name.

T-Mobile ‘in the process of informing impacted customers’

T-Mobile issued a news release, saying that they “are currently in the process of informing impacted customers” about the data breach.

“We understand that an incident like this has an impact on our customers and regret that this occurred,” the company said. “While we, like any other company, are unfortunately not immune to this type of criminal activity, we plan to continue to make substantial, multi-year investments in strengthening our cybersecurity program.”

The incident marks the company’s eighth hack in 5 years

According to The Verge, T-Mobile has disclosed eight hacks since 2018. Previous data breaches exposed customer call records (Jan. 2021) and credit application data (Aug. 2021).

Source: ABC News | The Verge