Flagstar Bank discloses a data breach that impacted 1.5 Million individuals

US Flagstar Bank disclosed a data breach that exposed files containing the personal information of 1.5 million individuals.

US-based Flagstar Bank disclosed a data breach that impacted roughly 1.5 million individuals, but the company did not share details about the attack. The security breach took place in early December 2021, and the investigation that was concluded early this month confirmed that actors had access to files containing the personal information of 1.5 million individuals.

According to a data breach notification published by the financial institution, the attackers has access to the social security numbers of some of the impacted individuals. The company is notifying the affected individuals.

At this time, Flagstar Bank is not aware of any misuse of the exposed data, the good news for the impacted individuals is that the company provides them two years of free identity monitoring services.

This is the second time that Flagstar was the victim of a security breach, in March 2021 it was hit by Clop ransomware gang. In March 2021, Clop ransomware operators started switching to a new tactic to force victims into paying the ransom by emailing their customers and asking them to demand a ransom payment to protect their privacy.

The new technique aims at making the double-extortion tactic more efficient, crooks sent emails directly to victims’ customers found in documents stolen during the ransomware attack.

According to BleepingComputer, the first victim threatened with this new tactic was Flagstar Bank followed by the University of Colorado.

The hack resulted from the compromise of a file transfer service from Accellion that took place at the end of 2020. This security breach also impacted nearly 1.5 million customers of Flagstar.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Zyxel)

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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”.