UScellular discloses the second data breach in a year

UScellular, one of the largest wireless carriers in the US, has disclosed a data breach after the hack suffered in December 2021.

UScellular has disclosed a data breach after the attack that compromised the company’s billing system in December 2021. United States Cellular Corporation, is the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the United States, with over 4.9 million customers in 426 markets in 23 states as of the second quarter of 2020.

According to the company, it discovered unauthorized access to its billing system on December 12, 2021, that resulted in the exposure of data associated with wireless customer accounts.

“On December 13, 2021, UScellular detected a data security incident in ‘which unauthorized individuals illegally accessed our billing system and gained access to wireless customer accounts that contain personal information. Unauthorized individuals attempted to leverage access to that information to fraudulently port numbers. Based on our investigation, we believe that the incident occurred on December 13-19, 2021.” reads the data breach notification letter. “Information in customer accounts include name, address, PIN code and cellular telephone number(s) as well as information about wireless services including service plan, usage and billing statements. Sensitive personal information, such as Social Security number and credit card information, is masked ‘within the CRM system.”

The attackers attempted to use this information to fraudulently port numbers.

UScellular revealed that 405 customers were impacted by this attack, the company reset login credentials for every affected impacted and immediately changed the impacted customers’ PIN and security question/answer.

In response to the incident, the company also immediately disconnected the computer accessed by threat actors from the internet and requested immediate removal from the internet of the fraudulent websites used by the fraudsters as part of the scheme.

The company recommends impacted individuals to remain vigilant and contact UScellular in case they will receive suspicious communications that appears from the US carrier.

On January 2021, the US wireless disclosed another data breach that exposed personal information of its customers.

The company detected the security breach on January 6, 2021, and determined that the intrusion took place early this year, on January 4th, 2021. Then threat actors tricked UScellular employees working in retail stores into downloading and installing malicious software. The malware allowed the attackers to access the CRM using the employee’s accounts and then access personal information, including phone numbers, of the company customers.

The attackers accessed the customer accounts and ported their wireless number to another carrier.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, data breach)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.