Three Hack Leaves Customer Information Vulnerable

Three, one of the UK’s leading mobile phone providers, said that hackers had managed to access a customer database after entering employee login details.

Nicholas Carter, a spokesman for Three, spoke to Reuters by email when he said that the database contains no bank account, card information or customer payment information.

The firm, which is owned by CK Hutchison Holdings Limited, said that within a space of four weeks, it had experienced a growing number of attempted fraud incidents on its handsets.

Carter added:

“To date, we have confirmed approximately 400 high-value handsets have been stolen through burglaries and eight devices have been illegally obtained through the upgrade activity.

“This has been visible through higher levels of burglaries of retail stores and attempts to unlawfully intercept upgrade devices.”

The BBC reported that three men were arrested on suspicion of being responsible the breach.

However, all three men were granted bail pending ongoing enquiries, according to the BBC, which cited a spokeswoman for the National Crime Agency (NCA). The NCA itself decided against making a comment.

TalkTalk Telecom Group Plc was fined £400,000 by the UK’s regulator for data protection in October due to security flaws that resulted in a cyber attack in 2015. The attack affected approximately 4% of the firm’s four million customers, as well as costing it somewhere in the region of £60m.

Three may have been lucky that sensitive financial data was not breached, but businesses up and down the UK may come to find themselves not be so lucky should they ignore the threat of cyber crime. More IT security jobs need to be created to counter this growing cyber threat.