Verizon Wireless: Personal Information & PINs for 14 Million Account Holders Exposed
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"Verizon Downplays Impact Of Customer Data Exposure"
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/verizon-impact-customer-data-exposure,34998.html
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A recent ZDNet report said that Nice Systems, an Israeli surveillance company and Verizon partners, exposed the account information of 14 million of the wireless network's customers. Verizon has now responded to the report, saying there was no theft or loss of customer information.
How The Data Was Exposed
According to Verizon, a Nice Systems employee put information about some of its customers on an Amazon S3 storage server, that allowed external access. The data could have been downloaded by anyone who had access to that public S3 address. However, Verizon said that this was done in error and wasn’t intentional.
According to Privacy International, Nice Systems is one of the largest Israeli providers of surveillance solutions, and it has ties to intelligence agencies from multiple countries. The company has also worked with notorious surveillance providers such as Hacking Team and Cellebrite.
The exposed records included information such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and account verification PINs. If these were mobile phone numbers, they could have allowed potential attackers access to customers’ Verizon accounts. This could have then further given the attackers access to online services that were protected by SMS-based two-factor authentication. Once the attackers could be identified as “customers” of Verizon, they could transfer the phone numbers to different phones and then receive the SMS tokens.
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That's OK. Verizon says only 6 Million accounts were exposed, not the 14 Million ZDNet states.
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