Charter Communications Data Breach Affects 4.9 Million Accounts
The ShinyHunters extortion gang has claimed responsibility for a data breach at Charter Communications, a US telecom giant, which has affected 4.9 million accounts. According to data breach notification service Have I Been Pwned, the breach occurred in early April when the gang hacked into Charter's systems using a voice phishing (vishing) attack that compromised an employee's Microsoft Entra account.
Charter Communications has confirmed the breach, stating that the attackers did not steal sensitive personal customer information, and that it had alerted authorities about the incident. However, the ShinyHunters gang claims to have stolen 42 million records from the company's Salesforce instance, including consumer and business customer names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, phone types, plan information, support ticket data, and some customer proprietary network information (CPNI) data.
Dispute Over Stolen Data
There is a dispute between Charter and the ShinyHunters gang over the extent of the stolen data. While the gang claims to have stolen CPNI data, Charter denies this, stating that "only sales tools used to manage current, past and prospective Business customers were impacted; no CPNI or sensitive PI was released by the threat actor." Have I Been Pwned analyzed the leaked data and confirmed that the incident affected 4.9 million accounts, whose names, email addresses, job titles, phone numbers, and physical addresses were stolen.
The ShinyHunters gang has been targeting Salesforce customers over the past year, breaching hundreds of companies worldwide and claiming the theft of billions of records in Salesforce Aura data theft attacks and a Salesloft Drift campaign. The FBI has recently advised ShinyHunters' victims not to give in to the gang's ransom demands, after previously warning that doing so cannot guarantee that threat actors won't attempt to sell the stolen data to other cybercriminals or extort them again.
Previous Breaches
Charter Communications' systems were also compromised in a wave of breaches by a Chinese state-backed threat group tracked as Salt Typhoon that also impacted AT&T, Verizon, Consolidated Communications, Windstream, and Lumen, as well as telecom companies in dozens of other countries.
The breach at Charter Communications is a reminder of the importance of cybersecurity and the need for companies to protect their customers' personal information. The incident also highlights the threat posed by extortion gangs like ShinyHunters, which use stolen data to demand ransom payments from their victims.
- 4.9 million accounts affected
- ShinyHunters extortion gang claimed responsibility
- Breach occurred in early April using a voice phishing (vishing) attack
- Charter Communications denies that CPNI data was stolen
- FBI advises ShinyHunters' victims not to give in to ransom demands
Charter Communications has over 92,000 employees and provides internet, mobile, video, and voice services to more than 32 million customers and over 57 million homes in 41 states across the US through its Spectrum brand. The company has alerted authorities about the incident and is investigating the breach.
The group later published the data, which exposed 4.9M unique email addresses along with names, phone numbers and physical addresses. A subset of approximately 85k records originating from an internal employee directory also included job titles. - Have I Been Pwned
The incident is a reminder of the importance of cybersecurity and the need for companies to protect their customers' personal information. The breach at Charter Communications is a significant incident that highlights the threat posed by extortion gangs like ShinyHunters.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the data breach at Charter Communications is a significant incident that affects 4.9 million accounts. The ShinyHunters extortion gang has claimed responsibility for the breach, which occurred in early April using a voice phishing (vishing) attack. The incident highlights the importance of cybersecurity and the need for companies to protect their customers' personal information.
Charter Communications has confirmed the breach and is investigating the incident. The company has alerted authorities and is working to protect its customers' personal information. The breach is a reminder of the threat posed by extortion gangs like ShinyHunters, which use stolen data to demand ransom payments from their victims.
Source: BleepingComputer