Security News > 2023 > January > How hackers stole the personal data of 37 million T-Mobile customers

T-Mobile and millions of its customers have been the victims of another data breach - this one apparently carried out by hackers who knew how to exploit an application programing interface used by the carrier.

The API did not leak other personal data such as payment card numbers, Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, passwords, or PINs, according to T-Mobile.

Over the past several years, the company has suffered several security incidents, including a bug on its website in 2018 that allowed anyone to access customer data, a breach in 2021 that exposed the personal data of almost 50 million people, and a series of breaches carried out by the Lapsus$ cybercrime group in March of 2022.

"Repeated data breaches such as this can have a significant impact on the reputation of organizations, and T-Mobile certainly seems to be an organization that is becoming synonymous with massive data breaches," says Erich Kron, security awareness advocate at KnowBe4.

"These attacks will keep happening until organizations commit to reduce and ultimately eliminate data silos and copy-based data integration in order to establish a foundation of control," said Dan DeMers, CEO and co-founder of Cinchy.

"In practice, what we're talking about is a fundamental shift where CTOs, CIOs, CDOs, data architects, and application developers start to decouple data from applications and other silos to establish 'zero copy' data ecosystems."

News URL

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/hackers-steal-t-mobile-customer-data/