What is t mobile data breach?

The attack started on February 24 and lasted until March 30, and affected 836 customers.

“In March 2023, the measures we have in place to alert us to unauthorized activity worked as designed and we were able to determine that a bad actor gained access to limited information from a small number of T-Mobile accounts between late February and March 2023,” T-Mobile explained in a letter to customers affected by the breach.

The company assured that no personal financial account information or call records have been compromised.

“The information obtained for each customer varied, but may have included full name, contact information, account number and associated phone numbers, T-Mobile account PIN, social security number, government ID, date of birth, balance due, internal codes that T-Mobile uses to service customer accounts (for example, rate plan and feature codes), and the number of lines,” the company added in the letter.

As a result of the breach, T-Mobile reset the account PINs of all affected customers and offered two years of free credit monitoring and identity theft detection services.

In addition, the company urged affected customers to take additional steps to protect their accounts. This included reviewing their account information for any unauthorized changes, updating their account PINs, monitoring their account activity regularly, and using any available features to enhance their account protections.

T-Mobile already disclosed a data breach this year, on January 19. The breach exposed the personal information of approximately 37 million customers. According to T-Mobile, the hackers were able to access the data by exploiting a vulnerable API.

Unfortunately, data breaches are almost the norm for T-Mobile; the company has disclosed several other breaches in recent years, including the August 2021 breach which affected 49 million customers.

“This latest cyberattack against T-Mobile may be smaller than previous breaches, but it doesn’t make it less concerning,” said Ryan McConechy, CTO of Barrier Networks.

“The fact that the attackers were able to operate on the T-Mobile network undetected for a month, stealing sensitive customer information without anyone’s knowledge is very concerning. Given that victims were unaware their data had been compromised, they would not have been on guard for phishing scams or been monitoring their accounts for fraudulent transactions, so it is likely attackers would have been able to exploit the stolen data during this time, completely under the radar.”

During a breach caused by hacking, 836 people had their names and driver's license or identification card numbers stolen, as well as possibly their account PIN, Social Security number, date of birth, balance due and phone plan, among other details. Financial account information and call records were not breached.

Jan 20 (Reuters) - U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile (TMUS.O) said on Thursday it was investigating a data breach that may have exposed 37 million postpaid and prepaid accounts, and hinted at incurring significant costs related to the incident.

It's the second major cyberattack in less than two years and comes months after the carrier agreed to upgrade its data security to settle a litigation related to a 2021 incident that compromised information of an estimated 76.6 million people.

The company identified malicious activity on Jan. 5 and contained it within a day, it said, adding no sensitive data such as financial information was exposed.

T-Mobile, however, added that basic customer data - such as name, billing address, email and phone number - was breached and that it had begun notifying impacted customers. The company has more than 110 million subscribers.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said the regulator had opened an investigation into the incident.

"Carriers have a unique responsibility to protect customer information. When they fail to do so, we will hold them accountable. This incident is the latest in a string of data breaches at the company, and the FCC is investigating," the spokesperson said.

T-Mobile declined to comment on the investigation. The company's shares fell 1% in Friday morning trade.

The news of the incident also drew sharp reaction from analysts.

"While these cybersecurity breaches may not be systemic in nature, their frequency of occurrence at T-Mobile is an alarming outlier relative to telecom peers," said Neil Mack, senior analyst for Moody's Investors Service.

"It could negatively impact customer behavior, cause churn to spike and potentially attract the scrutiny of the FCC and other regulators."