Verizon denies that a hacker leaked data from 300,000 customers

Earlier on Saturday night, we passed along a story that a hacker had stolen information from 3 million Verizon Wireless customers that was in plain-text.  Furthermore, he allegedly posted the information for 300,000 customers online beginning on Saturday. The hacker, who used the name "TibitXimer" before his Twitter account was taken down, sent out a tweet to make some clarifications to the story. The names and information were taken from a list of VerizonFIOS customers, said the hacker, and the information he took included sensitive data like serial numbers, names, addresses, starting date with Verizon, password to their account, phone numbers, and more.

Now, Verizon has come out with a statement that adds more clarification to the original story. A Verizon spokesman, Alberto Canal, says that "The ZDNet story is inaccurate." Canal says that there was a smaller incident months ago which resulted in no Verizon system being breached and no root access allowed despite the hacker's claims. He added that the number of people involved was a fraction of what was reported.

Verizon said it had contacted authorities and notified the customers whose information was involved so that they could beef up their defenses against the use of their personal data. The company said it alerted law enforcement on Saturday in light of the new allegations made by the hacker, whose main worry was the chance that his Twitter account would be closed. That became reality at around 11:15pm EST Saturday evening.


source: Forbes