San Francisco’s Verizon Enterprise solution’s computer security wing suffered an abrupt massive hack of 1.5 million customers’ records.
Brian Krebs who is an ace computer security writer stated that the whole database was on sale for $100,000 at a discreet underground cybercrime forum. The offer also holds increments of 100,000 records for $10,000 per piece. Buyers were also offered the option to purchase information about security weaknesses of Verizon’s Website.
Verizon Enterprise solution’s email statement said that security vulnerability was discovered and fixed on the enterprise’s client portal. Further investigation proved that the attacker obtained basic contact information on some of the enterprise’s customer profiles.
“Our investigation to date found an attacker obtained basic contact information on a number of our enterprise customers. No customer proprietary network information (CPNI) or other data was accessed or accessible.”
The hack did not involve any data of the consumer customers. It was rather ironic for Verizon since they write one of the most extensively read annual data breach investigation reports. Brad Bussie the director product management of STEAL THbits Technologies admitted that even those who report security breaches aren’t prone to those themselves.
Dodi Glenn, vice president of cyber security at PC Pitstop declared that even though the breach only involved basic customer contact information but it was valuable for the privacy of those concerned. Being a hugely subscribed company they feared the contact information may call forth phishing attacks since it exposed companies with large sums of money.
However, Verizon has a history of data breaches. The largest wireless telecommunications provider in the United States was hacked twice in last five years, once in 2012 and then in January 2016.
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