U.S. wireless telecom UScellular says a data breach at a third-party vendor resulted in a leak of 52,000 names and email addresses.
The company confirmed that data from the leak is available for download on a criminal data breach forum. The regional carrier serves roughly 5 million customers, and its largest geographical spread of wireless coverage is in the American Midwest.
The hacker behind the breach did not directly target UScellular’s system but obtained data through a third-party service provider, a spokesperson for UScellular told Information Security Media Group.
“We have been made aware of a recent security incident at a former third-party vendor resulting in unauthorized access to now out-of-date UScellular customer data. Our relationship with this third-party vendor was for a limited time,” the spokesperson added.
The data set is freely available for download on a popular hacker forum as seen by ISMG. A user named “IntelBroker” listed the entire data set of 144,000 entries with a disclaimer for those interested in downloading the data, stating it consists of multiple duplicate records that need filtering.
