Data from Verizon Leaked, Advise to Change Customers’ PIN

All Verizon customers who have dialed customer service during January-June 2017 would do good to make their Personal Identification Number up-to-date, alternatively revise their billing passwords constructed with sets of 4 digits and which safeguard their accounts from individuals attempting at impersonating those end-users via telephone.

Nice Systems, a company based in Israel and partnering with Verizon is reported to have exposed a huge 14m records related to customer calls over certain insecure storage server as that of Amazon S3. Worryingly, anybody can download these records from the server if he knows its web address. One would find the customers' names, account PINs and phone numbers inside the exposed records. UpGuard a security company has provided in detail exactly the different materials that were vulnerable.

Some personal information like a few PINs and phone numbers was contained inside the exposed data. However, voice recordings and Social Security Numbers weren't included, according to Verizon. With the help of PIN numbers a caller is authenticated if he dials the call center operating through wireline. The PIN doesn't help for reaching subscribers' accounts over the Internet.

All customer info was safe from theft or loss, since solely vendor Verizon, Nice Systems, and the security investigator who highlighted the data leakage had access to the storage server. Pymnts.com posted this, July 12, 2017.

It wasn't before late June when Verizon was notified about the leakage after which over 7 days were passed to get the information protected. Speaking to ZDNet, Verizon said it was probing what way data was inadequately saved on Amazon's server that catered to Web Services. The firm as well stated that a great amount of the information had little external value while there wasn't any indication of the data getting compromised.

And while according to UpGuard, approximately 14m customer data may've gotten exposed, Verizon states 6m subscribers may've been impacted, which's still plentiful people.

Within its press statement, Verizon made it clear that nobody managed accessing the information; hence it was safe from loss or theft. Verizon as well stated that the 6m subscribers affected belonged to its small as well as residential business wireline.

» SPAMfighter News - 7/18/2017