T-Mobile Learns From Past Breaches, Manages to Stop New Attack

U.S. carrier T-Mobile recently managed to thwart a major network breach before customers were impacted, reports Bloomberg. Hackers were able to get into edge-routing infrastructure, breaching a router owned and operated by T-Mobile.

T-Mobile was able to detect the suspicious activity, blocking hackers from further accessing its systems. There were apparently attempts at getting deeper into the T-Mobile network, but T-Mobile was able to catch the intrusion early so no customer data was compromised. Bloomberg says that people familiar with the situation have confirmed that T-Mobile knows how its network was breached and the access point has been fixed.

It is not clear when the hack covered in Bloomberg‘s article took place, nor who perpetrated the attack.

In recent weeks, Chinese state-sponsored hackers breached multiple telecommunications companies to access smartphones owned by U.S. politicians. On November 15, T-Mobile did confirm that its systems were accessed by the Chinese hackers, but said that it had seen no “significant impacts to T-Mobile systems or data” and had “no evidence of impacts to or exfiltration of any customer information.”

Back in 2021, T-Mobile suffered a major data breach that saw attackers access data from more than 50 million users. Data obtained included names, phone numbers, addresses, birth dates, Social Security numbers, driver’s license and ID info, IMEI numbers, and IMSI numbers, and hackers put it all up for sale.

At the time, T-Mobile pledged to bolster security with a multi-year investment and long-term partnerships with cybersecurity experts at Mandiant.

The 2021 hack ended up costing T-Mobile $60 million after it was fined by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) for failing to prevent or disclose unauthorized access to sensitive customer data.