In T-Mobile’s statement, T-Mobile said, “We have been working around the clock to investigate claims being made that T-Mobile data may have been illegally accessed.” The statement went on to say, “We have determined that unauthorized access to some T-Mobile data occurred, however we have not yet determined that there is any personal customer data involved. We are confident that the entry point used to gain access has been closed, and we are continuing our deep technical review of the situation across our systems to identify the nature of any data that was illegally accessed.”
The Scale of the Breach
Motherboard spoke with the seller of the data through direct messaging. Although the hacker has lost access to their backdoors to the servers at T-Mobile, supposedly due to T-Mobile’s action, the harm appears to have been done. According to the seller, the information was already backed up to “multiple places”. Motherboard reported seeing samples of the stolen information and was able to affirm that the information belongs to T-Mobile customers. The data includes extensive private information such as names, physical addresses, social security numbers, driver licenses information, phone numbers, and International Mobile Equipment Identity (IMEI) numbers. The seller told Motherboard that they successfully gained access to multiple servers related to T-Mobile. The data for around 30 million customers is being sold for 6 Bitcoin ($270,000 equivalent). The remainder of data for the 70 million+ customers will be sold through private channels according to the seller’s statement to Motherboard.
T-Mobile’s History of Data Breaches
T-Mobile is no stranger to incidences of compromised data. In fact, this is the fifth known data breach for the company in less than four years. The first attack occurred in 2018 when 2 million customers’ data was stolen. Then in November of 2019, hackers compromised sensitive customer information again with the theft of prepaid customer data. The third incident took place in March of 2020 when cybercriminals took customers’ personal and financial information. Then in late 2020, about 200,000 users’ information was stolen.
T-Mobile’s Investigation
T-Moble has confirmed that the “investigation will take some time”, but they are working hard and urgently to evaluate and confirm the extent of the breach. They stressed their commitment to communicating openly with their customers as more information becomes available. If this data breach is as extensive as the post claims, this is more serious than any of the previous attacks. According to T-Mobile’s second-quarter reporting for 2021, the company currently has around 104.7 million customers. With possibly 100 million customers reportingly affected, this breach might impact almost every user. Although it is not certain how much damage has been done, all T-Mobile users will need to be watchful for any suspicious activity on their accounts and credit report. For more information on identity theft, read our article What is Identity Theft and How Did It Become Such a Big Problem.
