37 million T-Mobile customers affected by data theft. This massive hack is the second in less than two years for the telecommunications company. The company is in the process of informing the persons concerned.
Another hack at T-Mobile
In an official statement released by the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC), T-Mobile clarified that customers’ sensitive financial information, such as credit card numbers or social security numbers, are not part of the data stolen by hackers. According to the company, the hackers were only able to collect ” simple data ”, such as names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers and dates of birth.
Hackers broke into T-Mobile’s API without permission. The telecom operator said it detected the hack on January 5 and closed the security breach. less than a day later, with the help of an external service of cybersecurity “. According to the experts who looked into this attack, the hackers were in the systems of T-Mobile at least since the end of November… So they had a month to quietly seize the data of 37 million customers.
In its statement, T-Mobile clarifies that “ malicious activity appears to be fully contained at present “. This is not the first time that the company has faced such a hack. In August 2021, the company admitted to having suffered an even bigger breach. At the time, 48 million customers (even if several associations mention the number of 100 million) had already been affected by a hack.
Over the past few years, T-Mobile had also suffered data breaches in 20202019, 2018 and 2015. It’s a lot. In 2021, T-Mobile had to pay $500 million for ” to fix » the damage caused by the security breach. Of this sum, $350 million was paid out to affected customers and the remaining $150 million was allocated to strengthening the company’s digital security. That is probably not enough.
T-Mobile specifies that since 2021, “ we have an investment plan in place by working with leading external cybersecurity experts to improve our cybersecurity capabilities and transform our approach. We have made substantial progress to date, and protecting our customers’ data remains a top priority. We will continue to make investments to strengthen our cybersecurity program “.