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Canada Security Communications

1.9 Million Bell Customer Email Addresses Stolen By 'Anonymous Hacker' (www.cbc.ca) 32

Posted by msmash from the security-woes dept.
Bell, Canada's largest telecommunications company, said a hacker had accessed customer information containing about 1.9 million active email addresses and about 1,700 names and active phone numbers. The breach was not connected to the recent global WannaCry malware attacks, the company added. From a report: The information appears to have been posted online, but the company could not confirm the leaked data was one and the same. "There is no indication that any financial, password or other sensitive personal information was accessed," the company wrote in a statement. Bell said the incident was unrelated to the massive spike in ransomware infections that affected an estimated 200,000 computers in more than 150 countries late last week. It is not clear when the breach occurred, how the data was accessed, or how long the attacker had access to Bell's systems.
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1.9 Million Bell Customer Email Addresses Stolen By 'Anonymous Hacker' More

1.9 Million Bell Customer Email Addresses Stolen By 'Anonymous Hacker'

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  • Pepperidge Farm remembers... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by grep -v '.*' * ( 780312 ) on Tuesday May 16, 2017 @12:45PM (#54427819)

    1.9 million active email addresses and about 1,700 names and active phone numbers.

    Remember the good old days when phone books ruled the earth? *1 The intrusion! OMG -- people could actually see how to spell your full name! AND obtain your phone number! AND your actual physical address. OH, the HORROR!! ( Heck, I understand the police force back then actually had phone number sorted phone-books instead of alphabetic ones for detective ease of use.)

    Now, tying it to a specific usage case (customers) IS a little more specific, but being a customer of "Bell Canada's largest telecommunications company" isn't exactly an exclusive club. Same for the email addresses -- it's easy and effectively free to spam those, but aren't they receiving spam already? And just because "knowing" someone's there doesn't mean they'll actually be reading your message. Although it IS an ever-so-slightly more of a chance that they will. Almost doesn't seem like it's worth the bother -- but then again, I don't know anything about in the spam ecosystem.

    It's still a bad event and should be prevented, but still: yawn. There is no indication that any [other data] was accessed" I'd be worried about what ELSE they did while they were (ARE) in there.

    *1: You might not, but *I* do. Heck, I used and remember when the prefix was words and not just 7 or 10 numeric digits -- Mine was LOcust followed by 5 digits. My mom had a party line (single line shared between families, each with a separate ring) and even used a phone without a dial -- you picked it up and talked to the operator who then dialed it for you.

    • I remember that you could pay extra for the privilege of an "unlisted" number as well.

    • Remember the good old days when phone books ruled the earth? *1 The intrusion! OMG -- people could actually see how to spell your full name! AND obtain your phone number! AND your actual physical address. OH, the HORROR!!

      It’s true that we used to be more open to associating our names to where we’d live and what we’d do or say (no need for a nickname when writing to the editor of the local paper). The huge difference, however, is that such information was mostly available to our (relative) neighbours: people living close to us, who could know us and that we could know; and if one of them attempted something unsavoury, the neighbourhood cops would likely take care of it. Besides, any information was availabl

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawguy ( 1600213 )

      1.9 million active email addresses and about 1,700 names and active phone numbers.

      Remember the good old days when phone books ruled the earth? *1 The intrusion! OMG -- people could actually see how to spell your full name! AND obtain your phone number! AND your actual physical address.

      Back then it took real money (and actual humans) to set up a call center to try to bilk you out of your money.

      Now you set up an IVR system to dial millions of numbers in the list and when you have an active lead, send that call to a live agent.

      It's so cheap that they don't need to start with a list, they can just dial numbers randomly and let the computers screen for leads, but having actual names helps make a scam more believable.

  • Phone book leak? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Isn't this like "leaking" the old phone book? Name, address, telephone # (and now email address)?

  • After dealing with Bell's horrid customer service for many years, and seeing how little they care about their customers, the only surprise is that it took this long for a major breach to happen.
    • That's one of the greatest problems these days. Companies not paying enough to properly train employees, and employees not getting paid enough to actually care about the job they do.

  • So someone copied a list of email addresses from Bell.

    Yawn.

  • 1) Why can't most data be kept Airgapped. Do companies really need to have everything on the public internet

    2) Why can't all data be encrypted in databases, not just passwords but everything. So what if it take a couple of extra seconds waiting for the decrypt.

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