Cybersecurity company UpGuard announced that a misconfigured cloud-based data deposit exposed the persona information of millions of Verizon customers
Those who called Verizon customer support in the last six months are in danger of having trouble. That’s because the data that got exposed contained names, addresses, emails, phone numbers, and worse, PINs. This is why it is tremendously recommended that those who know that they called Verizon change their PINs as soon as possible.
Nice System was the third party vendor who operated the cloud server. The UpGuard director noticed the unprotected server on June 8, while the company notified Verizon on June 13. After nine days, the breach was closed on June 22. However, it remains unknown for how long the breach was open before it got discovered by Vickery.
It was estimated that data from 14 million customers was exposed. However, Verizon checked and said that the exposure was limited to 6 million.
There are several reasons why the exposure of customers’ PINs is dangerous. Firstly, it gives direct access to a Verizon customer’s account. More than that, it allows the holder of the PIN to hijack a Verizon phone account which can further be used to circumvent 2-factor authentication. These are all magnified for those who use the same PIN for multiple accounts. All the accounts who share the same PIN can be considered compromised.
Taken all of these things into consideration, customers are strongly suggested to change their PINs right away in order to avoid further unpleasant situations.
