The recent data breach at TalkTalk, the phone and broadband provider with over four million UK customers, could have compromised sensitive information of its users, the company has warned.
“We are very sorry to tell you that yesterday a criminal investigation was launched by the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit following a significant and sustained cyber attack on our website on Wednesday 21st October”, Tristia Harrison, TalkTalk Managing Director, said in a post.
As soon as the attack was detected, the website was shut down and the company has been since then working with cybercrime specialists to get to the root of the problem. While the investigation is still going on, Harrison said that names, addresses, dates of birth, email addresses, telephone numbers, TalkTalk account information, credit card details and/or bank details could have been compromised.
Dido Harding, chief executive of TalkTalk, told the BBC that all 4m UK customers could 'potentially be affected'.
The post said that the company is offering a year’s free credit monitoring to all of its customers and will be contacting customers with the details.
“We'd like to reassure customers that we take the security of your data very seriously. We constantly review and update our systems to make sure they're as secure as possible and we’re taking all the necessary steps to understand this incident and to protect them as best we can against similar attacks in future”, Harrison added.
One victim of the attack told the Standard that her details had been posted online on the Pastebin website by the group claiming to be a Russian Islamist cyber jihadi group. A TalkTalk spokeswoman said police were investigating the claim but it was too early to say if it was genuine, Standard UK reported.
