Weekly Cybersecurity Recap May 5

Data breaches are harmful to the companies they hit as well as their customers, and this week telecommunications and networking companies were hit especially hard. T-Mobile and AT&T both suffered from serious breaches that put their customers at risk of being exposed. Networking giant CommScope was the victim of a vicious ransomware attack, putting network infrastructure technology at risk. Grocery chain Albertson's and dating sites were also exposed this week. If you are involved with any of the companies below, you should take immediate action to protect yourself. 

Albertson's

Albertson's is a massive grocery chain that's responsible for many smaller grocery stores throughout the United States today. The company was hit by a data attack that began on December 22, 2022, and persisted until after December 24, 2022. During that three-day period, a substantial amount of data was taken about employees and customers of the grocery chain. We don't know the scope of the data, but notifications were sent out to impacted individuals, which means that personal data such as Social Security Numbers, credit card information, or driver's license numbers were taken in the attack. 

CityJerks and TruckerSucker

Dating site users relying on CityJerks and TruckerSucker to meet other people were recently exposed to data attacks. The users on these two sites had their information released online, and it includes explicit and sometimes embarrassing information that the account holders likely don't want to be released to the public. We aren't sure how attackers were able to get into the dating accounts and take personal data from them, but they got into many different accounts rapidly and stole a substantial amount of information from them in the process. 

AT&T

Throughout April, AT&T email customers were hit hard by hacker attacks. The attackers utilized brute-force login attempts relying on passwords obtained elsewhere to get into AT&T email accounts. The hackers worked to gain access to the email accounts to steal cryptocurrency before owners could stop them. The attackers quickly reset passwords and changed keys for crypto wallets and exchanges to transfer funds from the victim's accounts into their own wallets. These attacks are devastating because there is little that can be done to get the cryptocurrency back once it's been transferred out. This is why crypto wallet users are encouraged to protect their accounts as much as possible and to make it impossible for attackers to gain access by way of an email attack. 

T-Mobile

Telecommunications giant T-Mobile was hit with its second data breach of 2023, and the breach resulted in the loss of data for more than 800 different customers. These customers lost data from their accounts, including Social Security Number, birth date, account PIN, full name, phone number, account number, and more. This attack shows that the T-Mobile network is vulnerable and that customers of the provider are at risk of being exposed. The attack took place between February and March of 2023, and if you're a customer of the company, you should watch out for potential data losses. 

CommScope

Throughout April, CommScope was hit by a serious ransomware attack. The attack resulted in employee data and proprietary designs, and technical documents being lost to a ransomware gang. CommScope is a massive network company with more than 30,000 employees, and some of those employees were put at risk by this ransomware attack. There is no information about what CommScope plans to do about the attack or what results we can expect, but CommScope employees should monitor their information closely.