A data breach happened at Verizon Enterprise Solutions. The violation which involves theft and resale of customer data was discovered by security firm KrebsOnSecurity. Verizon Enterprise Solutions is usually the one which is called when there are breaches in other companies, so this must be a big blow for them.
A prominent member of the underground cybercrime forum posted a new thread which seemed to advertise the sale of a database which contained contact information on customers of the Verizon Enterprise numbering 1.5 million. The member of the forum, which is carefully guarded, offered a retail price for the entire package at $100,000. The seller also gave options of buying chunks of the data for $10,000 at 100, 000 records each. The offer was to purchase information about security vulnerabilities in Verizon’s website.
The company, when contacted for information, acknowledged the breach and said that they had discovered the security flaw in their system which had allowed the hackers to steal customer contact data, also adding that they were contacting affected customers to let them know. In a statement they said:
“Verizon recently discovered and remediated security vulnerability on our enterprise client portal. Our investigation to date found an attacker obtained necessary contact information on many of our enterprise customers. No customer proprietary network information or other was accessed or accessible.”
The seller on the forum, of the Verizon Enterprise data, is offering multiple ways of buying the database. He also has the MongoDB database, meaning he might have somehow forced the database to dump all its contents. Verizon, however, did not answer to questions of how the data had been stolen, and how many customers were being alerted.
According to a 2015 report by Verizon itself, organized crime groups were the most frequently seen threat actor for Web applications attacks of precisely the same sort they suffered themselves. Their report also indicates that “Virtually every attack in this data set (98 percent) was opportunistic in nature, all aimed at easy targets,” the company wrote.
Verizon is usually the one telling other companies and organizations to watch out for this type of attacks so for it to be targeted like this is ironic. The customer database that is on sale on the forum will subject the affected customers to phishing and other targeted attacks. The fact that Verizon Enterprise claims 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies use their services means the list is a target rich list.