The dust has hardly settled on the ‘Talk Talk’ scandal than reps from Vodafone announced that close to 2,000 of their subscribers’ personal banking information had been accessed by a hacker.
The attackers used email addresses and passwords gotten from anonymous sources outside Vodafone. According to a Vodafone spokesman, the company’s systems did not get infringed at all in this particular incident. However, the company said that between the midnight of Wednesday and midday Thursday, there was an attempt made by criminals to access the company subscribers’ account details.
Vodafone went to authorities on Friday night to report of the attempt. Besides informing National Crime Agency, Ofcom and Information Commissioner’s Office, it started its own investigations.
In the statement, Vodafone continued to say that whilst all the security protocols and procedures were and still remain uncompromised, accounts of 1,827 had been accessed. This gave the criminals a chance to access the customers’ mobile phone numbers, their names, their bank sort code and the last four numbers of their bank accounts.
According to Vodafone’s preliminary investigations and mitigating procedures, only the details of the small number of subscribers given got compromised by the criminals’ attack. The information which the criminals stole can’t give them access the customers’ bank accounts. The company added that no debit or credit card customer details were accessed during the incident.
The downside to this attack is that the 1,827 customers are now prone to fraud and phishing attempts. According to the spokesman, the accounts of all the 1,827 customers have been blocked. The company has also contacted all the affected customers in an effort to assist them changing their account details. It had also contacted the banks of the affected customers warning them of the attacks.
Vodafone’s announcement comes barely a month after another such attack was directed to TalkTalk – a telecommunication company.
Close to 21,000 unique bank account numbers as well as sort numbers had been accessed according to TalkTalk. Email addresses, names and telephone numbers of around 1.2 million customers had also been accessed. The company added that obscured debit and credit card details of fewer than 28,000 clients as well as 15,000 customer dates of birth, were also accessed.
Initially, the company had feared that the criminal attack was far larger than this. However, this has not prevented the image of TalkTalk from dimming. <a href=”http://www.itv.com/news/2015-10-30/time-for-talktalk-to-provide-more-answers-on-hacking/” target=”_blank”>TalkTalk has been cyber-attacked</a> twice within 8 months; in august and February. In all the three incidences customer database has been hacked into.
