Hackers raid Verizon enterprise customer data, 1.5 million affected

If keeping our private data out of our government’s hands wasn’t trouble enough, we also have to be ever-vigilant against the online renegades who would seek to compromise our privacy for the sake of monetary gain. In a breaking security report by Brian Krebs, it appears that Verizon’s enterprise service have been hacked, and over 1.5 million accounts are affected. The cybercriminals are currently selling the data online in a “closely guarded underground cybercrime forum” for the asking price of $100,000.

Verizon Enterprise Solutions is a business that provides IT services to large companies. In a painfully ironic twist, one of the services they aim to provide is protection against large data breaches. This current attack is far-reaching, as fully 97 percent of Fortune 500 companies regularly use Verizon Enterprise Solutions for business.

According to Krebs, the hackers responsible are also offering to sell information regarding weaknesses in Verizon’s website. Although the price tag for the bulk data in its entirety sits at one hundred large on the black market, unscrupulous buyers can buy chunks of 100,000 records for $10,000 apiece. Verizon hasn’t revealed how the data breach took place, but they are actively notifying affected customers and scrambling to patch existing security vulnerabilities.

In a statement sent to Krebs, Verizon claimed that they “recently discovered and remediated a security vulnerability in our enterprise client portal… Our investigation to date found an attacker obtained basic contact information on a number of our enterprise customers. No customer proprietary network information (CPNI) or other data was accessed or accessible.”

What are your thoughts regarding this large data breach? Does your company use Verizon Enterprise Solutions? Let us know how you and others may be affected by this cyber attack in the comments below.