SIGA data breach exposed confidential data of 98000 US Military Personnel

Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) confirms that following the SIGA data breach, confidential data belonging to US military personnel were exposed.

A bad news for the US military, the Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) confirms that, following a the data breach of the German telecom company SIGA Telecom and an AAFES contractor occurred on March 5, data related nearly 98,000 U.S. military personnel stationed in Europe may have been exposed.

Hackers accessed names, addresses, emails and technical information belonging to the military personnel stationed in Europe and held by an on-base cell phone concessionaire.

“The Exchange learned on February 11 of a data breach of customer information held by concessionaire SIGA Telecom,” declared the AAFES spokesman Chris Ward said in an email Friday.

According to the AAFES spokesman the breach hasn’t exposed financial information about the military personnel, and it seems that stolen data were not being used in fraudulent transactions.

“There was no financial information released,” Ward said. “To date, there is no evidence of fraudulent use of the information.”

In response to the data breach, SIGA  immediately took its systems offline. The company reported the incident to the German authorities to advantage the investigation and prevent further damages. The ongoing investigation is followed by AAFES officials too, that are providing all the necessary support to SIGA executives.

This phase is critical to collect information that could help the investigators to identify the threat actor behind the attack, its technique and the motivation.

As part of the incident response plan, AAFES urged SIGA to notify its customers, set up a telephone information line, develop a remediation plan and perform a security assessment within 90 days.

“The investigation is ongoing.” Ward added.

The German telecom company SIGA Telecom also notified nearly holders 27,500 active accounts of the incident.

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs –  AAFES, SIGA data breach)

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”.

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