T-Mobile is investigating an alleged data breach claimed by the author of the post on an underground site, according to Vice’s Motherboard on August 15.
T-Mobile, the largest wireless carrier in the United States, is investigating an alleged major data breach that could have affected more than 100 million customers.
According to the report, the hacker claims to have gotten data on over 100 million T-Mobile users from T-Mobile servers.
In exchange for some of the data, the seller is asking for 6 bitcoins (about $287,000 at current pricing).
Social security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses, unique IMEI numbers, and driving license information are among the data samples obtained by Motherboard.
The seller told the source that they are currently selling the majority of the data privately, but that in exchange for the BTC ransom, they will hand over a subset of the data containing 30 million social security numbers and driver licenses.
“I suppose they already found out because we lost access to the backdoored servers,” the hacker stated, referring to T-alert Mobile’s and possible response to the attack.
The business is “aware of assertions made in an underground forum” and is “currently evaluating their authenticity,” according to a T-Mobile representative, who added, “We do not have any other information to provide at this time.”
T-Mobile isn’t the first company to be involved in a cyber-security incident. A victim of a SIM-swap hack who lost $450,000 in Bitcoin sued the mobile carrier in February.
When a victim’s cell phone number is stolen, a SIM-swap assault happens. This can then be used to get access to the victim’s online financial and social media accounts by intercepting two-factor authentication security messages or phone calls.
Calvin Cheng, the victim in this lawsuit, accused T-Mobile of failing to maintain proper security standards to protect its customers’ accounts from unauthorized access.
In July 2020, T-Mobile was sued by the CEO of a cryptocurrency corporation for a series of SIM swaps that resulted in the loss of $8.7 million in digital assets.
Ledger, a hardware wallet manufacturer, was hit with a class-action lawsuit in April this year for a large data breach that saw the personal information of 270,000 clients taken between April and June 2020.
