The hacker believed to be behind the recent T-Mobile data breach has revealed his identity in a new interview in which he said America's telecommunications have "terrible" security. As The Wall Street Journal first reported, 21-year-old American hacker John Binns, who now lives in Turkey, told the outlet that he was responsible for the T-Mobile hack and provided evidence showing how he could access T-Mobile accounts. users on company systems. . . Binns said he was able to obtain customer data from the mobile operator by scanning the web for unsecured routers. After finding one, he was able to access a data center in Washington state that contained the credentials for more than 100 servers. After realizing the amount of data he had access to, Binns panicked, and that's when he came to believe that T-Mobile's security was terrible. However, it is not yet clear if he acted alone or if he had some help, but in his interview with the Wall Street Journal, Binns hinted at how he worked with others for at least part of the hacking.
The real deal or just taking the credit?
Whether Binns' claims are true or not, the T-Mobile data breach is likely to have far-reaching consequences for many customers, including personally identifiable information (PII), IMEI numbers, phone numbers, IMSI and other data. Fortunately, in a recent statement, T-Mobile said it was confident it could shut down "the access and exit points that the wrong actor used in the attack." Still, experiencing a data breach will likely have negative effects on the company's operations and could lead to further investigation by regulators. In addition to claiming responsibility for the attack on T-Mobile, Binns also provided more details about his experience as a hacker to the Wall Street Journal. He said he started developing cheats for popular video games before discovering a flaw that was later used in a botnet targeting IoT devices. Binns also said in the interview that he exposed the T-Mobile data as a way to create "noise" to draw attention to his claims that the FBI kidnapped him in Germany and placed him in a fake mental hospital. At this point, Binns could actually be the root cause of the T-Mobile data breach or just take credit for drawing attention to the cause of it himself. We probably won't know more until the mobile carrier and US government agencies complete their full investigation into the matter. across the edge