Data Breach

T-Mobile suffered a new data breach, 37 million accounts have been compromised

Bad news for T-Mobile, the company disclosed a new data breach that resulted in the theft of data belonging to 37 customer accounts.

T-Mobile suffered a new data breach, threat actor stole the personal information of 37 million current postpaid and prepaid customer accounts.

The telecommunications company discovered the intrusion on January 5, 2023, the attackers obtained data through a single Application Programming Interface (“API”) without authorization.

The company immediately launched an investigation into the security breach with external cybersecurity experts, it traced the source of the attack and stop it.

T-Mobile pointed out that security measures and policies in place prevented the compromise of the most sensitive types of customer information. According to the investigation, customer accounts and finances were not put at risk directly by the security breach.

Customer payment card information (PCI), social security numbers/tax IDs, driver’s license or other government ID numbers, passwords/PINs or other financial account information were not exposed because the abused API does not provide access to this information.

“No passwords, payment card information, social security numbers, government ID numbers or other financial account information were compromised.” reads the press release published by the company. “Some basic customer information (nearly all of which is the type widely available in marketing databases or directories) was obtained, including name, billing address, email, phone number, date of birth, account number, and information such as the number of lines on the account and service plan features.”

Compromised data include name, billing address, email, phone number, date of birth, T-Mobile account number, and information such as the number of lines on the account and plan features.

“Rather, the impacted API is only able to provide a limited set of customer account data, including name, billing address, email, phone number, date of birth, T-Mobile account number and information such as the number of lines on the account and plan features.” reads the data breach notice issued by the company. “The preliminary result from our investigation indicates that the bad actor(s) obtained data from this API for approximately 37 million current postpaid and prepaid customer accounts, though many of these accounts did not include the full data set.”

While the investigation is still ongoing, T-Mobile is notifying customers who might have been impacted by the security incident.

The carrier suffered multiple data breaches in the last year, the last one in order of time took place in December 2021 when it discloses a data breach that impacted a “very small number of customers” who were victims of SIM swap attacks.

Below is the list of previous incidents suffered by T-Mobile:

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook and Mastodon

[adrotate banner=”9″][adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, data breach)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

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”.

Recent Posts

SECURITY AFFAIRS MALWARE NEWSLETTER ROUND 46

Security Affairs Malware newsletter includes a collection of the best articles and research on malware…

6 hours ago

Security Affairs newsletter Round 525 by Pierluigi Paganini – INTERNATIONAL EDITION

A new round of the weekly Securitythe weekly Security Affairs newsletterAffairs newsletter arrived! Every week…

6 hours ago

Operation ENDGAME disrupted global ransomware infrastructure

Operation ENDGAME dismantled key ransomware infrastructure, taking down 300 servers, 650 domains, and seizing €21.2M…

9 hours ago

Silent Ransom Group targeting law firms, the FBI warns

FBI warns Silent Ransom Group has targeted U.S. law firms for 2 years using callback…

1 day ago

Leader of Qakbot cybercrime network indicted in U.S. crackdown

The U.S. indicted Russian Rustam Gallyamov for leading the Qakbot botnet, which infected 700K+ devices…

1 day ago

Operation RapTor led to the arrest of 270 dark web vendors and buyers

Law enforcement operation codenamed 'Operation RapTor' led to the arrest of 270 dark web vendors…

2 days ago