T-Mobile Hacked: Over 40 Million Records Taken, including Social Security Numbers and Driver’s License Details

[Tsing]

Image: T-Mobile



It’s a sad week to be a T-Mobile customer. Following reports from earlier this week about a potential breach, the mobile communications giant confirmed in a press release shared today that the company has indeed suffered from a sophisticated cyberattack. Millions of records have been taken.



More specifically, as many as 47.8 million records have made their way into the hands of hackers. What’s worse is that the information taken appears to be quite sensitive; T-Mobile mentioned that at least some of the data includes highly personal information such as social security numbers.



“Some of the data accessed did include customers’ first and last names, date of birth, SSN, and driver’s license/ID information for a subset of current and former postpay customers and prospective T-Mobile customers,” T-Mobile admitted.



T-Mobile is taking multiple steps to protect...

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[Burticus]

Well isn't that just f*cking awesome. Thanks, T-Mo!

 

[Zarathustra]

****, that sucks,

I wonder if this impacts only direct T-Mobile customers, or customers of MVNO's who use their network as well...

 

[serpretetsky]

Why does t-mobile have social security and driver license numbers?

 

[Zarathustra]

Why does t-mobile have social security and driver license numbers?

Usually you have to prove your identity and pass a credit chedk whe you sign up for a new phone plan from any carrier. I guess that's why they have them on file.

 

[DrezKill]

Well fuuuuuuuuuck. My whole family is on Sprint, and T-Mobile f*cking bought Sprint, so yyyeeeaaahhh...

 

[Zarathustra]

Well fuuuuuuuuuck. My whole family is on Sprint, and T-Mobile f*cking bought Sprint, so yyyeeeaaahhh...

With a little luck they are still in a separate database

 

[DrezKill]

With a little luck they are still in a separate database

That would be really nice.

 

[Zarathustra]

That would be really nice.

So, the new merged T-Mobile that includes sprint has ~230 million subscribers according to Wikipedia.

Sprint had ~60 million subscribers before the merger.

Who knows where these 40 million compromized users came from. Some sort of combined database, from which they were only able to get 40 million randomly distributed users data before they were stopped (or ran out of space?) Or was it some sort of special sub-database?

I don't think we have enough details yet.