Company That Routes Billions of Text Messages Quietly Discloses It Was Hacked (vice.com) 33
A company that is a critical part of the global telecommunications infrastructure used by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon and several others around the world such as Vodafone and China Mobile, quietly disclosed that hackers were inside its systems for years, impacting more than 200 of its clients and potentially millions of cellphone users worldwide. From a report: The company, Syniverse, revealed in a filing dated September 27 with the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission that an unknown "individual or organization gained unauthorized access to databases within its network on several occasions, and that login information allowing access to or from its Electronic Data Transfer (EDT) environment was compromised for approximately 235 of its customers." A former Syniverse employee who worked on the EDT systems told Motherboard that those systems have information on all types of call records. [...] The company wrote that it discovered the breach in May 2021, but that the hack began in May of 2016.
Non-issue. (Score:5, Funny)
It's just text people, like an out-dated twitter. It's not like we depend on it for banking 2FA or other important security.
Re: Non-issue. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I get that you kid, but years of call metadata was also part of the package, and that's not nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
The jokes on them. Thanks to Facebook leaking my date, 99.999% of the texts I receive are from spammers. Have fun chasing that metadata down.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a Mobile Phone, which is what the world calls it..
Most of the world doesn't speak English, so that's false right off the get go.
Other than that different English speaking countries have slightly different words for things. News at 11.
Re: (Score:2)
Newsflash: Hackers can run programmatically run texts from text messages through Google Translate into any language they choose.
Re: (Score:2)
That's all well and good, but I was responding to a snarky comment claiming that he didn't own a cell phone because he owns a "mobile phone" which is "what the world calls it". My comment has nothing to do with the data compromised in the hack.
Re: (Score:2)
Cool. Do they still offer service for those [wikipedia.org]?
Re: (Score:2)
How do you hold your head up with such a mighty fedora?
Goodbye TFA (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I have mine sent through the psychic friends network. [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:1)
Maybe google should do that too.
Last time I tried to log onto google services they required me to enter my phone number so they could send me a sms for tfa. Listen to how stupid that sounds. And with this... but at least this wasn't alphabet's fault.
The funniest thing was I have google authenticator for that account, but that wasn't an option for tfa with google services.
Persons of interest. (Score:2)
Any of those 235 customers a state actor would be interested in?
Re:Persons of interest. (Score:4, Informative)
The end users aren't their customers.. Their customers are the service providers. 235 of them each having many many end users.
Re: (Score:3)
Platform based 2fa (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
With quantum communications [scientificamerican.com] we may have more secure means.
Re: (Score:1)
They used 2FA (Score:4, Funny)
He declined to comment on how those OTP messages were routed.
2016 you say (Score:1)
Still blaming SIM Swapping? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a lot of talk of SIM jacking being to blame for hacked accounts. Seems like this is more discreet and easier to cover up. Probably responsible for way more than social engineering to steal phone numbers.
Don't worry about it (Score:2)
You could already hijack SMS messages even without compromising any particular company's network, so this is only really useful for collecting bulk data sets to sell on the black market. Your data was already not secure, so this is fine.
Re: (Score:1)
Mossads backdoor has been found out? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
“Hacker”, it was designed with backdoors to allow the state security apparatus ease of access. And the said company is a front for Mossad.
No, it was never secure, and was built into the existing signalling system. That's why its limited in length. That length wasn't arbitrary, it was all of the space available.
Re: (Score:1)
Ok, maybe it is, maybe it isn't... anything to back up that assertion?
As far as this hack... it wouldn't surprise me at all if the FCC/congressional inquiries go away very quickly and very quietly once some three letter agency has an off-the-record meeting with a few people. On the other hand, it could just as easily be Russia or China. Or all of them at once. :shrug: nothing surprises me anymore.
Now it makes sense (Score:1)
I used to get spam texts immediatly after sending a text. It didn't matter whether it was 8:30am or 4:30pm, I'd get a spam text message about 2 minutes later. I sent someone a text at 3am last week and not 2 minutes later I got another spam text.
A thing to remember is... (Score:4, Insightful)
while it may only have affected 250 or so customers, ...
AT&T is one customer
T-Mobile is one customer
Verizon is one customer
focus on your core business the MBAs said (Score:2)
Outsource everything you can...
And we get this.