Tag Archives: Wireless Area Network Technology

T-Mobile Says Hackers Stole Data on About 37 Million Customers

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US Inc. said hackers accessed data, including birth dates and billing addresses, for about 37 million of its customers, the second major security lapse at the wireless company in two years.

The company said in a regulatory filing Thursday that it discovered the problem on Jan. 5 and was working with law-enforcement officials and cybersecurity consultants. T-Mobile said it believes the hackers had access to its data since Nov. 25 but that it has since been able to stop the malicious activity.

The cellphone carrier said it is currently notifying affected customers and that it believes the most sensitive types of records—such as credit card numbers, Social Security numbers and account passwords—weren’t compromised. T-Mobile has more than 110 million customers.

The company said its preliminary investigation indicates that data on about 37 million current postpaid and prepaid customer accounts was exposed. The company said hackers may have obtained names, billing addresses, emails, phone numbers, birth dates and account numbers. Information such as the number of lines on the account and plan features could have also been accessed, the company said.

“Some basic customer information (nearly all of which is the type widely available in marketing databases or directories) was obtained,” T-Mobile said in a statement. “No passwords, payment card information, social security numbers, government ID numbers or other financial account information were compromised.”

The company said its systems weren’t breached but someone was improperly obtaining data through an API, or application programming interface, that can provide some customer information. The company said it shut down the activity within 24 hours of discovering it.

The company’s investigation into the incident is ongoing. T-Mobile warned that it could incur significant costs tied to the incident, though it said it doesn’t currently expect a material effect on the company’s operations. The company is set to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 1.

T-Mobile acknowledged a security lapse in 2021 after personal information regarding more than 50 million of its current, former and prospective customers was found for sale online. T-Mobile later raised its estimate and said about 76.6 million U.S. residents had some sort of records exposed.

A 21-year-old American living in Turkey claimed credit for the 2021 intrusion and said the company’s security practices cleared an easy path for the theft of the data, which included Social Security numbers, birth dates and phone-specific identifiers. T-Mobile’s chief executive later apologized for the failure and said the company would improve its data safeguards.

T-Mobile proposed paying $350 million to settle a class-action lawsuit tied to the 2021 hack. As part of the settlement, the company also pledged to spend $150 million for security technology in 2022 and this year.

Write to Will Feuer at Will.Feuer@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
T-Mobile US Inc. acknowledged a security lapse in 2021. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said it was last year. (Corrected on Jan. 19)

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U.S. Plans Sanctions, Export Controls Against Russia if It Invades Ukraine

WASHINGTON—The U.S. is prepared to impose sanctions and export controls on critical sectors of the Russian economy if Russian President Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, and is working to mitigate market shocks if Russia withholds energy supplies in retaliation, officials said.

Taking a page out of the Trump administration playbook to pressure Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co., senior administration officials on Tuesday described potentially banning the export to Russia of various products that use microelectronics based on U.S. equipment, software or technology.

While the officials didn’t specify the products, they said that the goal would be to hit critical Russian industrial sectors that President Putin has given priority to, such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

“The export control options we’re considering alongside our allies and partners would hit Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy quite hard, and it would impair areas that are of importance to him,” a senior administration official said.

Administration officials declined to provide many specifics on the kinds of sanctions it would impose, but said the moves would exacerbate the selloff in Russian markets, raise the country’s cost of borrowing and hurt the value of Russia’s currency.

Russia has amassed more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders, moved tanks and other military gear westward from bases in the east, and deployed troops to neighboring Belarus, which also borders Ukraine. White House officials are preparing for an incursion, and in addition to preparing sanctions, the U.S. said it would bolster NATO forces in Eastern Europe.

President Biden said at a news conference that the U.S. is ready to unleash sanctions against Russia if President Vladimir Putin makes a move against Ukraine. Biden also laid out a possible diplomatic resolution. Photo: Susan Walsh/Associated Press (Video from 1/19/22)

After weeks of calls and meetings in European capitals, U.S. and European officials said Tuesday they were seeing “convergence” on prospective sanctions among the U.S. and European nations, in part due to assurances the U.S. is working to secure energy supplies should Mr. Putin invade Ukraine. U.S. officials said they are looking for energy stockpiles in North Africa, the Middle East, Asia and inside the U.S.

“If Russia decides to weaponize its supply of natural gas or crude oil, it wouldn’t be without consequences to the Russian economy,” one of the U.S. officials said. “This is a one-dimensional economy, and that means it needs oil and gas revenue at least as much as Europe needs its energy supply.”

European officials said the Biden administration’s hands-on approach in consulting them and keeping them informed of U.S. plans, including the personal outreach by Mr. Biden and his top officials, has spurred cooperation.

Still, Russia’s ability to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions is significant—far higher than the likes of Iran, whose economy plummeted into a deep slump in 2018 after the Trump administration reimposed nuclear sanctions.

The Bank of Russia puts the country’s reserves at around $630 billion at the end of 2021 and Europe is dependent on Russia for almost 40% of its gas supplies, an export stream sanctions are unlikely to cut off. Russia’s trade and political links with China also make it less vulnerable to being isolated from the world economy.

The U.S. announcement came a day after President Biden discussed the Ukraine crisis with several European leaders. The leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, discussed their coordination of sanctions measures and the situation in Ukraine.

The leaders agreed that no major sanctions options should be taken off the table, a European Union official said, even if some would likely be used only as a last resort. Those might include measures that could cause collateral economic harm to Western countries, like cutting Russia out of the SWIFT financial network that enables banks to settle transactions across the world, and embargoes on energy imports from Russia.

“The leaders agreed that, should a further Russian incursion into Ukraine happen, allies must enact swift retributive responses including an unprecedented package of sanctions,” Mr. Johnson’s office said in a statement after the call. “They resolved to continue coordinating closely on any such response.”

The export controls under consideration, the officials said, would be implemented through a powerful U.S. policy tool known as the Foreign Direct Product Rule, which the Trump administration used to cripple China’s Huawei.

Using the rule to target a country or multiple industrial sectors as opposed to a single company is a novel strategy that could potentially have wide-ranging effects given the global dominance and ubiquity of U.S. chip-making tools and software. For example, the U.S. could use the rule to block a foreign company that made a phone in a different foreign country from selling that item to Russia if the device uses any U.S. chips.

The impact of the rule would depend on how broadly officials decide to apply the restrictions and on the precise wording in any regulation. The Trump administration made multiple attempts before settling on language for a regulation that ultimately exacted a meaningful impact on Huawei.

Write to Gordon Lubold at Gordon.Lubold@wsj.com, Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com and Laurence Norman at laurence.norman@wsj.com

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