In the U.S., there has been a repeated cyberattack on T-Mobile US, a subsidiary of Telekom. This time, 37 million customers were affected. The attack occurred back in November and was discovered in early January.
Cyberattack on T-Mobile noticed on January 5
The cyberattack on T-Mobile US was reported by the company only last Thursday to the relevant regulatory authority, although it had already been noticed on January 5. It is said to have begun as early as November.
According to its own information, T-Mobile fixed the security vulnerability within a day of it becoming known. Nevertheless, a large amount of data is said to have been stolen. There is talk of 37 million people being affected. According to initial findings, the stolen data includes telephone numbers, dates of birth and billing addresses. Significantly more sensitive data such as passwords, credit card or social security numbers, on the other hand, are not said to be among the stolen material.
Numerous cyberattacks on T-Mobile in the past
Nonetheless, T-Mobile is likely to be in trouble as a result of the cyberattack. This has been shown by numerous attacks from the past. As a result of these attacks, there were legal disputes between the affected parties and T-Mobile, which ended with large settlement payments. In 2015, the server of a service provider was attacked, after which data of more than 15 million T-Mobile customers was captured. This was followed in 2021 by an attack in which data from more than 40 million people was stolen. In the same year, unknown persons were again able to penetrate T-Mobile’s servers through a vulnerability.
As a result, several affected parties sued the company and the aforementioned settlement payment was made. T-Mobile agreed to pay a total of 500 million US dollars. However, not the entire amount was distributed to the affected parties. Nearly a third was to be invested in improving cyber security. T-Mobile told the relevant regulatory authority that progress had already been made in this regard, but that the company wanted to continue working on improving its security infrastructure.
T-Mobile expects high costs
T-Mobile has not ruled out the possibility of incurring high costs in the aftermath of the latest attack, presumably in part because of these experiences. In addition to the direct costs of repairing the security infrastructure and compensating those affected, the company is also facing indirect costs. As a result, the price of T-Mobile shares has fallen by around 1.12 percent so far.
