New York (AFP)
The telephone operator T-Mobile admitted Wednesday the theft of private data of 7.8 million customers during a cyber attack targeting it, estimating for the moment that their financial data had not been stolen.
"Our preliminary analysis is that the personal information of approximately 7.8 million paying subscribers to our services is in the stolen files, as well as just over 40 million files of former or potential customers," said the group said in a statement Wednesday.
Some of the data hackers gained access to include the first and last names of customers or potential customers, their date of birth, their social security number, and information about their driver's license or ID, says T-Mobile. .
On the other hand, "no telephone number, account number, PIN code, password or financial information have been compromised in these files of customers or potential customers", specifies the operator who confirmed the intrusion of hackers into its computer systems Monday.
The presence of financial data among all the stolen files is however still uncertain for the time being, the group indicating in its press release to have "no indication".
In addition, among the exposed data of approximately 850,000 subscribers to prepaid offers were the PIN codes, which the group announced to have already reset.
According to screenshots published by the computer security site Bleeping Computer in recent days, the personal information of at least 30 million people had been offered for sale on forums for the equivalent of 280,000 bitcoin (i.e. approximately $ 13 billion).
Data theft and ransomware attacks have escalated in recent months, targeting various companies and organizations, including a US pipeline operator, the Irish health services IT system and a major Indian airline.
Facebook, Yahoo and Marriott have suffered theft of personal information concerning more than 100 million of their users or customers in recent years.
T-Mobile also suggested Wednesday to its customers to change their PIN code and announced to offer them a two-year subscription to protect their private data against theft.
© 2021 AFP