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T-Mobile admits that data of 40 million users compromised

By Yashasvini on Aug 18, 2021 | 04:38 AM IST

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 T-Mobile US Inc revealed on Wednesday that the data of 40 million people had been compromised in the cyber-attack that occurred earlier this week.

The stolen data included first and last names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information, of current and potential customers. The victims included nearly 7.8 million current subscribers with postpaid plans, and people who applied for credit with T-Mobile, whether or not, they ended up doing business with it.

Users of its Metro by T-Mobile, legacy Sprint and Boost Mobile brands weren’t among those affected by the breach.

T-Mobile had 104.8 million customers as of June. It acknowledged the data breach on Sunday after U.S.-based digital media outlet Vice first reported that a seller had posted on an underground forum offering for sale some private data, including social security numbers from a breach at T-Mobile servers.

The seller said that the data included 30 million social security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses, unique IMEI numbers, and driver's licenses information. They were selling it for 6 bitcoin or nearly $270,000.

The company said that it had reset the PIN codes of all the breached prepaid accounts and advised the postpaid users to do the same. To compensate for the breach it offered two years of free identity protection services from security firm McAfee to the affected parties.

T-Mobile’s data breach comes days after cryptocurrency platform Poly Network lost $610 million in a hack and later offered the hacker or hackers a $500,000 “bug bounty”.

Cyber-attacks have increased due to weak work-from-home networks which are easily infringed by hackers due to low-security levels.

Picture Credits : Wall Street Journal

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