Recently, Motherboard reported that tons of data were leaked from Verizon, the data breach includes full names, email addresses, corporate ID numbers, and phone numbers of Verizon employees. The US carrier has already confirmed it, but it also said that they wouldn’t engage with the hacker as the information is not sensitive.
What’s odd, we learned about the data breach from Motherboard, which said that the hacked had contacted the media to share the stolen information. However, we still do not know whether this is up-to-date information or outdated. But as XDA thinks, it seems the information includes both current and previous employees’ info.
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In its turn, Motherboard reached out to some of the phone numbers in the data to check whether the data is sensitive. Interestingly, four of them confirmed the phone numbers and emails belong to them and they currently work for Verizon. One of them said he had worked for Verizon previously.
It sounds strange but the hacker(s) could get data after convincing a Verizon employee to give remote access to their corporate terminal. The naïve Verizon employee was thinking he/she is talking with an internal support employee.
“These employees are idiots and will allow you to connect to their PC under the guise that you are from internal support,” they told Motherboard.
Once getting access to an employee’s computer, the hacker(s) could gain access to the wireless carrier’s internal tool. So they were able to check out various details about employees working for the company. This is not the all, he even created an additional tool to download the aforementioned data.
After the data breach, the hackers contacted Verizon, requesting a payment of $250,000 USD. Verizon confirmed this:
“A fraudster recently contacted us threatening to release readily available employee directory information in exchange for payment from Verizon. We do not believe the fraudster has any sensitive information and we do not plan to engage with the individual further. As always, we take the security of Verizon data very seriously and we have strong measures in place to protect our people and systems.”
Fortunately, there are no social security numbers, passwords, or credit card information in the data.
