T-Mobile’s code was stolen by the Lapsus$ hacker organization in a series of attacks in March, according to Krebs on Security. In a letter to The Verge, T-Mobile confirmed the hack and stated that the “systems hacked contained no customer or government information or any similarly sensitive information.”
The Lapsus$ hacking gang discussed attacking T-Mobile in the week leading up to the arrest of seven of its adolescent members, according to copies of private communications recovered by Krebs. Employees could make SIM swaps using the company’s internal technologies, such as Atlas, T-Mobile’s management system, after acquiring credentials online. This form of attack involves stealing a target’s phone number and transferring it to an attacker’s device. The attacker can then acquire any texts or calls received by that person’s phone number, including any multi-factor authentication messages.
Lapsus$ hackers also attempted to break into the FBI and Department of Defense’s T-Mobile accounts, according to screenshotted conversations shared by Krebs. They were finally unable to do so due to the need for extra verification processes.
T-Mobile said in an emailed statement to The Verge that “our monitoring tools detected a bad actor using stolen credentials to access internal systems that house operational tools software” a few weeks ago. “Our systems and processes performed as expected, the breach was quickly detected and stopped, and the compromised credentials were rendered useless.”
Over the years, T-Mobile has been the target of various cyber-attacks. Although this particular hack did not compromise customer information, previous incidents did. A breach in August 2021 exposed the personal information of nearly 47 million users, while a few months later, another attack affected “a small number” of client accounts.
Lapsus$ has earned a name for itself as a hacking group that focuses on huge technological firms’ source code, such as Microsoft, Samsung, and Nvidia. Ubisoft, Apple Health partner Globant, and authentication business Okta have all been targeted by the organization, which is said to be run by a teen mastermind.
