Over a dozen Mobile Carriers from across the world are reported to be under the control of hackers who could shut down the mobile network creating a partial or total blackout any time soon!
Yes, you’ve read it right!
A Boston based security company named Cybereason has discovered the above-said fact in its recent study and added that hackers are holding tons of data by taking control of databases of most of the phone network providers operating in Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America along with the Middle East.
News is out that the infiltration into the network took place in 2012 who then started gaining access to hundreds of gigabytes of data of people. If made public, the activity can easily constitute a massive data breach clearly suggesting that the mobile carriers have completely failed to protect the data of their respective users from past 7-8 years.
Cybereason researchers have found that the cyber crooks have gained data access to such an extent that not only do they now have usernames and passwords, but also have created a bunch of domain privileges for themselves which could also lead to a complete network shut down someday.
“The hack on mobile carriers is said to have reportedly provided cyber crooks access to information such as call logs, text messages, geolocation data. They have already filtered the data to target high-profile victims working for government and military agencies from the west”, says Mor Levi, Vice President, Cybereason.
“The hack was a part of a global Chinese cyber attack campaign dubbed as ‘Operation Soft Cell’ probably having links to Beijing”, said Lior Div, Chief Executive, Cybereason.
Note- The Massachusetts based company has come to a conclusion of Chinese presence in the hack based on the hacking tools used to infiltrate the networks of mobile carriers which were similar to those used by Chinese hacking group named APT10.
