Month: August 2021

Telecommunications giant T-Mobile has issued a warning that following a security breach, personal data of more than 50 million customers has been compromised. The data includes names, dates of birth, phone numbers, addresses, US Social Security Numbers, and driver’s license information of customers.

The seller was asking for 6 bitcoin (around $270,000) for a subset of the data containing 30 million Social Security Numbers and driver’s licenses, and said that they were looking to sell the remaining information privately.

T-Mobile said that the data breach affected about 7.8 million current customers and 40 million records of former or prospective customers. Both prepaid and postpaid customers were affected.

Read more about it here.

Global IT and consulting giant Accenture has allegedly been hit by a LockBit 2.0 ransomware attack. Accenture acknowledged in an internal memo that on July 30, 2021, attackers stole client information and work materials in “security incident.”

The ransomware cybercriminals have stolen databases containing over 6TB of data, are demanding a $50M ransom. They further claim that the hack was the result of an insider job.

Accenture did not initially disclose the ransomware attack, and later downplayed it. Accenture said it “fully restored” the affected servers from backups.

Read more about it here.

The city of Joplin, Missouri, US, announced a few days ago that it was hit in July by a ransomware attack. Computer servers and programs that operated the city’s online services were closed down on July 7, 2021. Joplin’s internet-based telephone system was restored two days later. Cybersecurity firms hired to recover the city’s information technology systems have restored nearly every system needed to resume normal operations, including the city’s COVID-19 dashboard, online utility payments and court functions, Edwards said.

“An insurer has paid $320,000, to someone not identified, to keep any sensitive information obtained as a result of the cyberattack from being exposed”, said City Manager Nick Edwards in the statement.

“No additional information about the breach will be disclosed now because making more information available to the public could harm the investigation and expose the city to future risks or attacks”, the statement said.

Read more about it here.