The claims originally were posted in what T-Mobile called an “underground forum.” Although the particular forum post does not mention T-Mobile by name, the seller of the data said it came from company servers. The hacker claims to have obtained data for over 100 million people, and even has the IMEI numbers for smartphones. The seller is asking for 6 bitcoin for a data packet containing 30 million Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, which at the time of this writing, is about $275,000. The rest of the data will be sold privately, according to the hacker. Some of the data stolen has been validated as T-Mobile continues to investigate the authenticity of the hacker’s claims and whether or not they really stole the data for 100 million people. T-Mobile has had to deal with multiple data breaches in recent years. In 2019, the company confirmed that personal information was stolen in a cyberattack, although no financial data or Social Security numbers were included with that data. In late 2020, there was another security incident, but, again, no personal information was stolen. If the forum post is indeed accurate, this breach is much more serious and could cause lasting damage. In a press release of its Q2 financial results, T-Mobile announced that it has a total of 104.8 million customers on its network.
