Verizon Server Left Unsecured Exposing 14 Million Customer Records
"We regret the incident and apologize to our customers." - Verizon in a statement to CNBC.
A third party Israeli tech company has exposed millions of Verizon's consumer data in a recent report by ZDNet.
As many as 14 million customers of Verizon have had their personal information exposed due to an unsecured server that stored the data. Anyone who called the company's customer service within the past six months have had their information stored on unprotected Amazon S3 storage servers outsourced to Nice Systems, an Israeli based company.
The data that was not made private was available to anyone who was able to easily guess the web address. Reportedly Verizon was informed of the exposed information in June but it took more than a week for Verizon and Nice Systems to secure the server.
The database has collection of communication logs of consumers that had contacted the customer service along with their cell phone numbers, and account PIN numbers. The leaked PIN numbers are said to not have been linked to accounts, but rather to authenticate customers at the call centers. Verizon has since apologized in a statement to CNBC.
"We regret the incident and apologize to our customers. As a media outlet recently reported, an employee of one of our vendors put information into a cloud storage area and incorrectly set the storage to allow external access. We have been able to confirm that the only access to the cloud storage area by a person other than Verizon or its vendor was a researcher who brought this issue to our attention. In other words, there has been no loss or theft of Verizon or Verizon customer information."
This breach comes after 1.5 million business costumers had their information for sale by hackers one year ago.
Source: ZDNet
