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Are you a T-Mobile prepaid customer? If yes, you should immediately create or update your associated account PIN/passcode as additional protection. The US-based telecom giant T-Mobile today disclosed a yet another data breach incident that recently exposed potentially personal information of some of the customers using its prepaid services. What happened? In a statement posted on its website, T-Mobile said its cybersecurity team discovered a "malicious, unauthorized access" to information associated with an undisclosed number of its prepaid wireless account customers. However, the company did not disclose precisely how the breach happened, when it happened, and how the attackers unauthorizedly managed to access the private information of the company's prepaid customers. What type of information was accessed? The stolen data associated with customers' prepaid wireless accounts include their: names, phone numbers, billing addresses (if customers provided

As suspected, the KYC details of thousands of Binance's customers that hackers obtained and leaked online earlier this month came from the company's third-party vendor, Malta-based cryptocurrency exchange Binance confirmed. For those unaware, Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, hit by a " Potential KYC leak " earlier this month, with an unknown hacker distributing the Know Your Customer (KYC) images of hundreds of its users online and to media outlets. Before leaking the KYC images online, the alleged hacker threatened the exchange to release KYC data of its 10,000 customers if the company did not pay 300 Bitcoins—equivalent to over $3 million at today's exchange value. While Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao called the incident a fud (fear, uncertainty, doubt), the exchange recently confirmed that some of the leaked images match actual accounts though others show evidence of manipulation. According to an official blog post , t

The introduction of Open AI's ChatGPT was a defining moment for the software industry, touching off a GenAI race with its November 2022 release. SaaS vendors are now rushing to upgrade tools with enhanced productivity capabilities that are driven by generative AI. Among a wide range of uses, GenAI tools make it easier for developers to build software, assist sales teams in mundane email writing, help marketers produce unique content at low cost, and enable teams and creatives to brainstorm new ideas.  Recent significant GenAI product launches include Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and Salesforce Einstein GPT. Notably, these GenAI tools from leading SaaS providers are paid enhancements, a clear sign that no SaaS provider will want to miss out on cashing in on the GenAI transformation. Google will soon launch its SGE "Search Generative Experience" platform for premium AI-generated summaries rather than a list of websites.  At this pace, it's just a matter of a short time befo

Eastern European country Bulgaria has suffered the biggest data breach in its history that compromised personal and financial information of 5 million adult citizens out of its total population of 7 million people. According to multiple sources in local Bulgarian media , an unknown hacker earlier this week emailed them download links to 11GB of stolen data which included taxpayer's personal identifiable numbers, addresses, and financial data. In a brief statement released Monday, the National Revenue Agency (NRA) of Bulgaria said the stolen data originates from the country's tax reporting service. The NRA also indicated that the Ministry of the Interior and the State Agency for National Security (SANS) have started taking an assessment of the potential vulnerability in NRA's systems that attackers might have exploited to breach into its databases. It appears that until now, the hacker, who claimed to be a Russian man, has only released 57 out of a total of 110 c

A team of security researchers has claims to have found a publicly-accessible database that exposes information on more than 80 million U.S. households—nearly 65 percent of the total number of American households. Discovered by VPNMentor's research team lead by hacktivists Noam Rotem and Ran Locar, the unsecured database includes 24GB of extremely detailed information about individual homes, including their full names, addresses, ages, and birth dates. The massive database which is hosted on a Microsoft cloud server also contains coded information noted in "numerical values," which the researchers believe correlates to homeowners' gender, marital status, income bracket, status, and dwelling type. Fortunately, the unprotected database does not contain passwords, social security numbers or payment card information related to any of the affected American households. The researchers verified the accuracy of some data in the cache, but they did not download the

The Georgia Institute of Technology, well known as Georgia Tech, has confirmed a data breach that has exposed personal information of 1.3 million current and former faculty members, students, staff and student applicants. In a brief note published Tuesday, Georgia Tech says an unknown outside entity gained "unauthorized access" to its web application and accessed the University's central database by exploiting a vulnerability in the web app. Georgia Tech traced the first unauthorized access to its system to December 14, 2018, though it's unclear how long the unknown attacker(s) had access to the university database containing sensitive students and staff information. The database contained names, addresses, social security numbers, internal identification numbers, and date of birth of current and former students, faculty and staff, and student applicants. However, the University has launched a forensic investigation to determine the full extent of the breach.

European airplane maker Airbus admitted yesterday a data breach of its "Commercial Aircraft business" information systems that allowed intruders to gain access to some of its employees' personal information. Though the company did not elaborate on the nature of the hack, it claimed that the security breach did not affect its commercial operations. So, there's no impact on aircraft production. Airbus confirmed that the attackers unauthorized accessed some data earlier this month, which the plane manufacturer claimed was "mostly professional contact and IT identification details of some Airbus employees in Europe." "Investigations are ongoing to understand if any specific data was targeted; however we do know some personal data was accessed," Airbus said in its press release published on Wednesday. After detecting the security breach, the plan manufacturer started an investigation to determine the origin of the hack and to understand the f

German federal police have arrested a 20-year-old local student for stealing and publishing a massive trove of personal data of hundreds of politicians , journalists and other public figures last month. The young man, whose identity has not been revealed by the police, was arrested after police raided his parent's house in west-central German State of Hesse on Sunday and recovered a computer that the suspect tried to destroy 2 days before the search and a data backup. The suspect, who believed to have acted alone, has admitted of carrying out the mass hacking of German politicians out of anger at their political statements, BKA Federal Criminal Police revealed. "The accused was interrogated on 07.01.2019 by the senior prosecutor and officials of the Federal Criminal Police Office. He comprehensively acknowledged the allegations against him and provided information on his own offenses," the BKA said in a press release . "Due to a lack of grounds for detentio

Germany has been hit with the biggest hack in its history. A group of unknown hackers has leaked highly-sensitive personal data from more than 100 German politicians, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Brandenburg's prime minister Dietmar Woidke, along with some German artists, journalists, and YouTube celebrities. The leaked data that was published on a Twitter account ( @_0rbit ) and dated back to before October 2018 includes phone numbers, email addresses, private chats, bills, credit card information and photos of victims' IDs. Although it is yet unclear who perpetrated this mass hack and how they managed to perform it, the leaked data appears to be collected unauthorizedly by hacking into their smartphones. The hack targeted all of Germany's political parties currently represented in the federal parliament, including the CDU, CSU, SPD, FDP, Left party (Die Linke) and Greens, except for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). While Justice Minister

Another day, another data breach. This time it's the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) NASA today confirmed a data breach that may have compromised personal information of some of its current and former employees after at least one of the agency's servers was hacked. In an internal memo sent to all employees on Tuesday, NASA said the unknown hackers managed to gain access to one of its servers storing the personally identifiable information (PII), including social security numbers, of current and former employees. The agency said NASA discovered the breach on October 23 when its cybersecurity personnel began investigating a possible breach of two of its servers holding employee records. After discovering the intrusion, NASA has since secured its servers and informed that the agency is working with its federal cybersecurity partners "to examine the servers to determine the scope of the potential data exfiltration and identify pot

The World's most popular question-and-answer website Quora has suffered a massive data breach with unknown hackers gaining unauthorized access to potentially sensitive personal information of about 100 million of its users. Quora announced the incident late Monday after its team last Friday discovered that an unidentified malicious third-party managed to gain unauthorized access to one of its systems and stole data on approximately 100 million users—that's almost half of its entire user base. According to Adam D'Angelo, the chief executive officer and co-founder of Quora, the personal user information compromised in the breach includes: Account information , such as names, email addresses, encrypted (hashed) passwords, and data imported from linked social networks like Facebook and Twitter when authorized by users. Public content and actions , like questions, answers, comments, and upvotes. Non-public content and actions , including answer requests, downvotes,

British and Dutch data protection regulators Tuesday hit the ride-sharing company Uber with a total fine of $1,170,892 (~ 1.1 million) for failing to protect its customers' personal information during a 2016 cyber attack involving millions of users. Late last year, Uber unveiled that the company had suffered a massive data breach in October 2016, exposing names, email addresses and phone numbers of 57 million Uber riders and drivers along with driving license numbers of around 600,000 drivers. Besides this, it was also reported that instead of disclosing the breach at the time, the company paid $100,000 in ransom to the two hackers with access to the stolen data in exchange for keeping the incident secret and deleting the information. Today Britain's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) fined Uber 385,000 pounds ($491,102), while the Dutch Data Protection Authority (Dutch DPA) levied a 600,000 euro ($679,790) penalty on Uber for failing to protect the personal informatio

Over a week after Google admitted the company tracks users' location even after they disable location history, it has now been revealed that the tech giant has signed a secret deal with Mastercard that allows it to track what users buy offline. Google has paid Mastercard millions of dollars in exchange to access this information. Neither Google nor Mastercard has publicly announced the business partnership over allowing Google to measure retail spending, though the deal has now been disclosed by Bloomberg. According to four unidentified people with knowledge of the deal cited by the news outlet, Google and Mastercard reached the agreement after a four-year negotiation, wherein all Mastercard transaction data in the U.S. has been encrypted and transmitted to Google. Google packaged the data into a new tool for advertisers, called Store Sales Measurement, and currently being tested the tool with a small group of advertisers, allowing them to track whether online advertise

Air Canada has confirmed a data breach that may have affected about 20,000 customers of its 1.7 million mobile app users. The company said it had "detected unusual log-in behavior" on its mobile app between August 22 and 24, during which the personal information for some of its customers "may potentially have been improperly accessed." The exposed information contains basic information such as customers' names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other information they have added to their profiles. Passport Numbers Exposed in Air Canada Data Breach However, what's worrisome? Hackers could have also accessed additional data including customer's passport number, passport expiration date, passport country of issuance and country of residence, Aeroplan number, known traveler number, NEXUS number, gender, date of birth, and nationality, if users had this information saved in their profile on the Air Canada mobile app. The airline assured its c