The Polish telecommunications company T-Mobile suffered a hack and lost access to the data of 30 million of its users. The cybercriminal who claims the act asks for a ransom of 6 bitcoin (BTC) to return what was stolen.
The attack was confirmed by the company itself, which stated in a statement that they are “carrying out an exhaustive analysis with digital forensic experts »to better understand what has happened. In addition, the company assured that it is working with law enforcement agencies to determine the steps they should follow.
Although T-Mobile assured that until the moment of the statement (that is, on Monday, August) it was not yet known if there was data from affected users , the Motherboard portal stated that this is the case. As explained, this medium was able to confirm that personal data was offered in an illegal market of the darknet . This information included the users’ social security numbers, names, physical addresses, cell phone numbers, driver’s licenses and unique IMEI keys.
The publication did not refer to T-Mobile, but Motherboard was able to communicate with the seller and he confirmed the origin of the “package” that he trades at a value of 6 BTC, that is, USD 278,314 at the close of this note, according to data from CoinMarketCap. The hacker claims to have data from more users in addition to the 30 million offered. According to its version, would have information on more than 100 million people.
For its part, T-Mobile stated in its publication that the data leak has been closed, while the “deep technical reviews” of the situation continue. This investigation, it is detailed, will take some time, and until it is completed the company will not give more details about the compromised data.
“The protection of our customers is something we take very seriously,” says the statement from T-Mobile. The same text states that, once the investigations are concluded, the company will inform its customers and shareholders of what happened.
Data in exchange for cryptocurrencies, a criminal modality on the rise
These types of cyberattacks in which confidential or personal data are stolen have proliferated in the last time. Charging in cryptocurrencies – many of them private, such as monero (XMR) – is a variable that is repeated frequently, especially in transactions on the darknet . This has given them a bad reputation, despite the fact that such operations have been carried out in the past with fiat money in a similar way.
In this sense, as CriptoNoticias reported, in January one of these illegal markets hosted in the depths of the internet went out of business after earning $ 1 billion in bitcoin. But there was also good news for law enforcement: in January, Europol managed to dismantle the largest black market on the darknet , which had already made a profit for more of 4,650 bitcoin.
