Over 50 million customers’ data including phone number addresses were stolen when T-Mobile was hacked. Read on as the hacker explains how he breached carrier.
T-Mobile has been one of the major targets of hackers. For some time now, hackers have attacked the wireless carrier service provider a number of times.
Most of the time, we have imagined seeing a group of tech geeks somewhere surrounded by high-tech computers, wearing a black hoody and vendetta mask. Of course, that is just our imagination. What we are looking at here is our regular 21-year-old man.
Hacking is not like taking a walk in the park even for expert programmers so why does T-Mobile get hacked?
Why are hackers targeting T-Mobile?
Is there something the company is doing wrong?
We all want to find out about these things and behold, the hacker explains how he hacked the carrier and why it seemed so easy to do so.
The hacker narrates
A 21-year-old young man who identifies as John Binns, an American who moved to Turkey claims responsibility for the August T-Mobile hack. He explained to the Wall Street Journal via a Telegram channel, why it was so easy for him to do that.
According to the young man, the company’s wireless security system was too flawed so it was very easy for him to breach the system. He said; “Their security is awful“. Per the hacker’s narration, an unsecured T-Mobile router was what helped him get easy access to their systems.
This is not the first time such a thing happened to T-Mobile. Per previous records, this is the third time such a thing happened, and cybersecurity experts have also confirmed that T-Mobile’s security systems need improvements.
Over 50 million customers’ personal data were stolen. John Binns said; “I was panicking because I had access to something big“. He has not said if the data he stole has been sold or not.
According to the T-Mobile records, the stolen data belongs to prospective customers and customers that have moved to different carriers.
Many people believe, hackers are hired by people with the intention of achieving a specific goal. Per John Binns’s narration, his goal was to get attention. He said; “Generating noise was the goal“. While it might not seem like he was hired to do this, being hired by competitors is still not out of the possible reasons for this act.
After the hacker breached carrier
After the hacker breached carrier, there have launched investigations into the matter.
Unit221B confirmed to T-Mobile that the person behind the hacking used the alias “IRDev”. It is also believed that the person using the same alias was reaching out to online criminals to sell stolen data.
Mr. Binns on the other hand has proven to the Wall Street Journal that he can access the “IRDev”. He also proved that he has access to other linking online aliases including v0rtex.
These aliases have been involved in some past online attacks earlier and it is believed that Mr. Binns was involved.
T-Mobile has also confirmed that the holes used to breach their cyber defense has been closed. They have also notified customers to update their PINs and passwords regularly.