Wednesday, August 18, 2021

The T-Mobile Hack is a Big One

I was a Sprint customer ever since they offered wireless service.  It's been so long, I'm not even sure when I first started with them.  However times change and in the not too distant past, Sprint was bought/merged by T-Mobile.  

Recently I changed out my SIM card to begin accessing the T-Mobile network and overall it's been a good experience.  The signal is fine in my area of the world and really, that's all that matters for a wireless carrier as far as I'm concerned.

However, I wasn't prepared for what I found out over the weekend when MotherBoard reported that there was someone on the Dark Web offering the personal data of 100 million people.  The records of 30 million of those people could be purchased for about $270,000.

On August 16, 2021 T-Mobile made a press release regarding the incident.  It is not the most detailed announcement I've ever read, but they *are* promising to communicate further when they have more information about what transpired.  Give it a read:


We have been working around the clock to investigate claims being made that T-Mobile data may have been illegally accessed. We take the protection of our customers very seriously and we are conducting an extensive analysis alongside digital forensic experts to understand the validity of these claims, and we are coordinating with law enforcement.

We have determined that unauthorized access to some T-Mobile data occurred, however we have not yet determined that there is any personal customer data involved. We are confident that the entry point used to gain access has been closed, and we are continuing our deep technical review of the situation across our systems to identify the nature of any data that was illegally accessed. This investigation will take some time but we are working with the highest degree of urgency. Until we have completed this assessment we cannot confirm the reported number of records affected or the validity of statements made by others.

We understand that customers will have questions and concerns, and resolving those is critically important to us. Once we have a more complete and verified understanding of what occurred, we will proactively communicate with our customers and other stakeholders.




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