Millions Of Verizon Customers At Risk Following Data Security Breach

A partner company of Verizon recently suffered a massive security breach, which has placed the personal information of millions of the carrier’s customers at risk. Now, these customers can no longer rely on their emails, social media accounts, or even their two-factor authentication to remain safe. What’s worse is the potential financial impact that this data breach might entail.

The danger was discovered by UpGuard’s Chris Vickery, a cyber security expert when he looked into the Amazon S3 server that housed millions of customer data. According to Vickery, up to 14 million clients are still at risk of having their data compromised, ZDNet reports.

To make matters worse, the data that is now open season includes the names of the clients, along with their addresses, phone numbers, and even the PIN codes of their accounts. These details could allow malicious individuals to not only hijack smartphones, they could even be used to steal identities and drain bank accounts.

It would seem that the fault lies with Nice Systems, an Israeli company that is partnered with Verizon. The carrier itself confirmed that up to six million of its clients have compromised information, which is still a lot. Another cyber security expert who specializes in passwords, Per Thorsheim even calls this event the “nightmare” situation for customers.

"Losing access to your phone can have serious consequences for some," Thorsheim said. "The worst case is that you lose access to all the services that use SMS for two-factor authentication, and countless services use and rely on SMS on being what is assumed to be a secure channel."

On the other hand, Verizon is quick to tell CNN that so far, no customer information theft has occurred. The carrier is trying to reassure its clients that their data is still safe, despite the fact that the information was out in the open for a while and anyone could have snatched them at any time.