Hack attack over five years at SMS provider Syniverse

Syniverse processes SMS for all major US providers and is primarily responsible for ensuring that short messages are sent across providers. Now the company has reported being hacked for over five years. Personal data of countless affected persons has in all likelihood been tapped.

Syniverse reports attack to Securities and Exchange Commission

Syniverse has told the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it became aware of the attack in May of this year. According to the report, access to the company’s system, which processes some 740 billion SMS messages annually, was immediately removed. It is not yet known who is behind the attack, but the investigating authorities have already been informed.

The question remains unanswered whether SMS contents could be read and were actually read. The statement only mentions that the company’s databases were accessed several times and that data of around 235 customers was compromised. It is also worth mentioning in this context that Syniverse is obviously interested in keeping the incident from becoming public as much as possible: For example, the report was not made proactively, but in the course of a mandatory notification due to an upcoming merger with an IPO. In this report, the incident is mentioned as a possible risk for investors, but is by no means the focus of the report.

Access to sensitive data likely

In response to press inquiries about the extent to which data could have been accessed, Syniverse merely stated that it was unable to provide any information on this due to the particular confidentiality of the matter. The magazine Vice then turned to a person who works at a mobile phone provider. According to this person, it is extremely likely that sensitive data could have been transferred. This is said to include, for example, the length and cost of individual text messages, the numbers of the contacts involved, the location of the two cell phones, and the content of the short messages. However, it is unclear whether the respondent interviewed by Vice is a trustworthy source. Nevertheless, the information seems plausible.