The media reported that a hacker had accessed a database that contained the full names, email addresses, corporate IDs and phone numbers of hundreds of Verizon employees.
Journalists from the Vice Motherboard write that last week an anonymous hacker contacted the editorial office, claiming to have compromised Verizon. He claimed to have gained access to the above data by tricking an employee into giving him remote access to his corporate computer. After that, the attacker was able to use Verizon’s internal tool, which shows information about employees, and wrote a script to collect information from the database.
It is not yet clear whether all the data stolen by the criminal is accurate and up-to-date. By calling several numbers, the journalists managed to confirm that some of the information in the database is true. So, four people verified their full names and email addresses and said they worked for Verizon. Another person reported that the data is correct, but he worked for the company before.
“Their employees are idiots who will let you connect to your PC under the guise of an internal support specialist,” the hacker said.
The attacker also stated that he would like to receive a reward of $ 250,000 from Verizon for this “security check”. The company confirmed to reporters that the hacker contacted them.
“We were recently contacted by a scammer who threatened to reveal employee information in exchange for a ransom from Verizon. We do not believe that the scammer has any confidential information and do not plan to interact with this person, ”a company representative said.
While the database does not seem to contain information such as social security numbers, passwords, or bank card numbers, stolen data can still pose a threat, the newspaper notes. For example, this information can be useful to criminals who decide to attack company employees or impersonate a Verizon employee in order to gain access to internal tools.