Hackers appear to have gotten the better of Verizon. A new report indicates that over 1.5 million clients of the Verizon Enterprise Solutions wing of the telecommunications company have had their info hacked for the purposes of resale online.
KrebsOnSecurity reports that the data was placed up for sale earlier this week by “a prominent member of a closely guarded underground cybercrime forum.” The seller had the entire package of customer info priced at $100,000, but was willing to let buyers purchase slices of the data for $10,000 apiece.
Verizon confirmed that the breach occurred in a statement about the data theft, although the corporation was a bit coy on specifics.
“Verizon recently discovered and remediated a security vulnerability on our enterprise client portal,” the company said in an emailed statement. “Our investigation to date found an attacker obtained basic contact information on a number of our enterprise customers. No customer proprietary network information (CPNI) or other data was accessed or accessible.”
Customers impacted by the breach are being notified, although this particular issue shouldn’t impact regular Verizon Wireless users. The info theft is specifically a cause for concern for clients using Verizon Enterprise Solutions, a demographic that includes a significant business presence. Seclore CEO Vishal Gupta told USA Today that having access to the stolen customer data presents a lucrative scenario for those that know how to use the information.
“With 99 percent of the Fortune 500 using Verizon Enterprise Solutions, the compromise of 1.5 million customers’ contact details could have a huge payday for hackers. Stealing contact information doesn’t have the immediate payoff of a credit card number, but in the long term can be extremely lucrative if leveraged correctly,”
(via The Daily Dot)