Posted on August 26, 2018 at 2:44 PM

T-Mobile Hack Steals Data of Millions of Users

A recent statement from T-Mobile notified its wireless customers in the US of a hacking attack that may have exposed personal data of 2 million users.

T-Mobile hacked!

A large telecommunications firm, T-Mobile, has recently posted a letter to its website, stating that they recently suffered a large hacking attack. In the attack, the company seemingly lost large quantities of data to hackers. The stolen information includes names and numbers of T-Mobile customers, as well as their email addresses, and even account numbers. The breach was discovered on Monday, and the point of access was immediately closed. After that, the company alerted the authorities.

For now, the company is still unsure whether the data in question was only accessed, or was it actually stolen as well. The firm assured their users that they take information security very seriously. They explained that there are numerous safeguards that are set to protect the personal information of users from falling into the hands of such attackers. The company then apologized for the inconvenience caused by the incident.

While T-Mobile is a large company, with an even larger number of clients (currently exceeding 77 million), it would seem that only a small percentage of its users were actually affected, whether the hack resulted in an actual theft, or not. According to their report, it would seem that only around 3% of the service’s users were actually affected in any way by this attack. That puts the number of affected individuals to around 2 million people, or in the worst case, 2.5 million.

Reasons behind the attack

Hacks like this one have become almost a regular occurrence these days, and numerous companies, large and small, have experienced similar breaches. Most of the time, the hackers’ goal is to obtain as much information as they can, for the purpose of selling them on the Dark Web. This is a part of the Internet that has become a favorite location for criminals to buy and sell illegal goods and services.

There are also less ominous cases of hackers breaching the security of specific firms just for fun, to make a point regarding their weak security, or simply to humiliate them.

T-Mobile is unsure of the motivation behind this attack, but considering the nature of the company, it can be assumed that the attackers were after personal data that they could sell to other cybercriminals. So far, the company has notified the affected users, as well as relevant authorities. Those users of this firm’s services who did not receive any kind of official warning are likely not affected by the attack.

It is also known that some of the firm’s MetroPCS users were also affected by this attack. These individuals have also received a warning that their security might be endangered, which is all that the firm can do for now. So far, they refused to share additional information, and the investigation of the attack is likely still in progress.