TalkTalk website hit by cyber-attack

C_Mababejive

SnowTiger wrote: »

Punters are furious on TalkTalk's forums.

However, it appears the data breach may not have been as serious as initially reported.

https://help2.talktalk.co.uk/oct22incident:

The investigations by TalkTalk and the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit into the cyber attack continue. We can confirm that the latest update of our investigation is as follows:

• This cyber attack was on our website not our core systems
• We can confirm that we do not store complete credit card details on the website; any credit card details that may have been accessed had a series of numbers hidden and therefore are not usable for financial transactions eg 012345xxxxxx 6789
• TalkTalk My Account passwords have not been accessed
• We now expect the amount of financial information that may have been accessed to be materially lower than initially believed and would on its own not enable a criminal to take money from your account
• The Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit criminal investigation continues

The latest word is that only partial card details were taken and, despite what was reported earlier, passwords were not.

I guess the thieves, perhaps, only have a list of names, addresses and phone numbers. Possibly birth dates, too, however a lot of Talktalk users have said they've never given theirs to the company.

I think these data breaches are far more common than people think and wouldn't be surprised if those details weren't floating around out there already.

Yesterday, it was reported that customer's National Security numbers had been taken during the attack. Seriously??? Has anyone ever given their Internet provider their National Security number? Don't we refer to it as National Insurance number anyway?

There we have it. My take on this story is somewhat cynical. If the media get a whiff of it then journalists love it. They whip it up into a frenzy and splurge it everywhere along with all the add ons..cyber criminals probably acting from some distant exotic location preying on innocent people,,they could steal our bank accounts, take over our computers, turn off our electric,,launch a war and access MI5 laptops etc etc blah blah blah..

Most of it is, i suspect baloney.

But there is another side to it. The Fat cat side,,, last week didnt TTs share price drop as much as 10% ?

19th october about £3.00 a go,, to £2.39 on Friday then by close on Friday to £2.56 and i suspect by Monday it will go up again.

Now if you had the inside track on this AND could throw some petrol on the media fire..well you buy low and wait for the rise..whats not to like??

I dont think any full banking details have been obtained but even if they had,,well what use are they? They could form part of an individual file of data built on a single individual which does happen,, but to extract value,,well you would have to resort to phisihng/vishing..phone calling to engineer a payment.

You could possibly obtain value by mail ordering goods and services or obtaining services on the internet but almost certainly a CVV would be required and they wouldnt have it.

If someone orders goods to be delivered and/or obtains internet services, there is almost always an end user ,an end consumer, a delivery address so a chunk of it is traceable,,so why is it not traced? Answer,,no one seems responsible for doing it and it is just written off..

enfield_freddy

with the info stolen this could easily happen


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7174760.stm

enfield_freddy

there was no Islamic ransom note , rumour's coming out of talk talk this morning are saying the theory is that it's a group of Methodists in Hounslow hoping to boost the value of their BT shares.

Forex_Fred

C_Mababejive wrote: »

There we have it. My take on this story is somewhat cynical. If the media get a whiff of it then journalists love it. They whip it up into a frenzy and splurge it everywhere along with all the add ons..cyber criminals probably acting from some distant exotic location preying on innocent people,,they could steal our bank accounts, take over our computers, turn off our electric,,launch a war and access MI5 laptops etc etc blah blah blah..

Most of it is, i suspect baloney.

But there is another side to it. The Fat cat side,,, last week didnt TTs share price drop as much as 10% ?

19th october about £3.00 a go,, to £2.39 on Friday then by close on Friday to £2.56 and i suspect by Monday it will go up again.

Now if you had the inside track on this AND could throw some petrol on the media fire..well you buy low and wait for the rise..whats not to like??

I dont think any full banking details have been obtained but even if they had,,well what use are they? They could form part of an individual file of data built on a single individual which does happen,, but to extract value,,well you would have to resort to phisihng/vishing..phone calling to engineer a payment.

You could possibly obtain value by mail ordering goods and services or obtaining services on the internet but almost certainly a CVV would be required and they wouldnt have it.

If someone orders goods to be delivered and/or obtains internet services, there is almost always an end user ,an end consumer, a delivery address so a chunk of it is traceable,,so why is it not traced? Answer,,no one seems responsible for doing it and it is just written off..

I made a good few quid on Friday by shorting TT. Will be looking for another trade on Monday. Thanks Mr Hacker.

C_Mababejive

Forex_Fred wrote: »

I made a good few quid on Friday by shorting TT. Will be looking for another trade on Monday. Thanks Mr Hacker.

Well done,,every cloud has a silver lining..

cookie365

ManofLeisure wrote: »

I'm sure TT has learnt many lessons

They didn't learn any lessons last time they were hacked and had customer information stolen. Or the time before that. Or all the other times they've managed to keep quiet about.

Forex_Fred

Is anybody going to leave TT, or would this eventually make TT the safest ISP? My contracts ended and the only thing stopping me renewing is the 18 month contract. Just to add I had a scam TT call yesterday. This time the geezer had an American accent. He said there was a problem with my computer, he had my name, address and account number. I told him to hold the line while I switched on the computer. I nipped down to the shop to get some milk and a newspaper. Was away for nearly 20 minutes, he was still on the line. I said "Bloody hell are you still there?" and started laughing. He slammed the phone down.

Peter999_2

To be honest, I really like TalkTalk. They are so cheap!, I know people have serious issues with them but I've not had any more problems than with any other ISP.

I seem to get things for free from them all the time. I phoned to leave about 5 months ago when they put the prices up - without much hassle they offered me 12 months of broadband for free (including the top fibre).
Then they took away the 10% discount and gave me 6 months of free uk landline and mobile calls.

Now they have rather stupidly allowed this big data theft but given me 12 months free credit alerts. I know people say that Noddle isn't as good as Experian etc. but I've been with them at least a couple of years and all my credit cards etc. appear on the report every month..

I find it hard to get too angry with a company that charges me £17.99 a month for broadband/phone and then £12 for two mobile contracts (1000 mins 1.4GB and 600 mins 600MB).

I have been defrauded three times so far - twice from an Egg credit card and once through Paypal. Both times I noticed within two days and got my money back. I was always convinced that the Egg card was an inside job as I never actually used the card - it was just for free balance transfers.

TalkTalk did the right thing in letting everybody know pretty quickly though it is unforgivable that the data wasn't encrypted. I'm certainly not going to leave them any time soon, for me it's a simple risk balance. The value currently outweighs the risk in my eyes.

Edited to add - I also got £120 vouchers when I joined up and got topcasback for the mobiles etc.

elektra

checked my AOL email account and removed any personal data , address phone number - it did not have account info

but today also realised the data was still present here https://mybenefits.aol.com/

Ok, that does not have bank details either but no need for it to have name address and phone details anymore

Jack_Griffin

C_Mababejive wrote: »

But there is another side to it. The Fat cat side,,, last week didnt TTs share price drop as much as 10% ?

19th october about £3.00 a go,, to £2.39 on Friday then by close on Friday to £2.56 and i suspect by Monday it will go up again.

Now if you had the inside track on this AND could throw some petrol on the media fire..well you buy low and wait for the rise..whats not to like??

Think you are wrong there, no one in their right mind will touch this company with a bargepole.

Update Monday - dropped another 12% today, £2.25 and falling tomorrow I reckon.