Hacker demands $277,000 from T-Mobile’s userbase breach

T-Mobile launched on Sunday an investigation into an online forum post claiming to be trading a large volume of the operator’s sensitive data including Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and driver license information linked to 100 million users.

The forum itself did not specifically mention the U.S. telecommunication operator, but according to a report by VICE’s Motherboard, hackers directly obtained the data from the company. 

“T-Mobile USA. Full customer info,” the seller notified Motherboard in an online chat.

In the concealed forum, the hackers declared the intention of selling a fragment of 30 million social security numbers and driver licenses for six bitcoins – which accumulates to $278,191 as of the time of writing, according to Coindesk. 

It is worth mentioning that the hacker is also working on privately selling access to the remainder of the stolen data. As for the U.S. operator, the company announced that it is aware of the online forum and is currently investigating the severity of the breach.

“We are aware of claims made in an underground forum and have been actively investigating their validity,” T-Mobile spokesperson informed The Verge. “We do not have any additional information to share at this time,” he added.

The hacker told Motherboard that even though the service provider closed any access they might have to its servers; they are not affected by T-Mobile’s counterfeit measures since they already accessed and backed up the embezzled data in various locations.

“I think they already found out because we lost access to the backdoored servers,” the hacker shared with Motherboard.

In recent years, the service provider has been a victim of a flurry of targeted cyber breaches with the most recent one in December 2020, which exposed the company’s proprietary network information.

During the system infiltration, call-related data, and phone numbers of some of T-Mobile’s customer base were revealed. However, the hack did not attain any of customers’ accounts names, physical or email addresses, financial data, credit card information, Social Security numbers, tax IDs, passwords, or PINs.

Throughout that same period, U.S. T-Mobile announced its plans to raise $3 billion in funding in a bid to fuel its 5G venture and raise the spectrum for next-generation networks.