NTT admits hackers accessed details of almost 18,000 corporate customers in cyberattack

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Telco giant NTT confirms losing sensitive customer data in cyberattack
The data belonged to almost 18,000 NTT corporate clients
The identity of the attackers has not yet been disclosed

Japanese telecommunications giant NTT Communications has confirmed suffering a cyberattack which saw it lose data on roughly 18,000 client organizations.

In a press release published on the company’s website, the company said it first discovered the breach on February 5, and established a day later that some sensitive data had been exfiltrated.

“Following an internal investigation, we determined there was a possibility that some data stored within our internal Order Information Distribution System, which manages and distributes information related to service orders and changes for corporate customers, had been leaked,” the announcement reads. “No information related to services provided to individual customers was leaked.”

Key data missing

Further in the announcement, the company said 17,891 customers had their data leaked, with affected services includiong those provided to certain corporate customers. The data stolen includes contract numbers, the customer name shown on the contract, customer contact names, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, postal addresses, and information related to the use of services.

Corporate cellphone and smartphone subscriptions with NTT DOCOMO were not affected, and so far, there is no evidence the data is being abused in the wild, the firm said.

Some key information is still missing, though - as we don’t know exactly how many people are affected by the breach, and who the threat actors actually are.

NTT has also not discussed if this was a simple smash-and-grab, or if it was a ransomware attack. Finally, we don’t know how the criminals compromised NTT’s infrastructure, if they used compromised credentials, or a software vulnerability.

To tackle the threat and make sure it doesn’t repeat, NTT said it is “enhancing all appropriate security measures and monitoring systems,” without elaborating further.

NTT Communications offers services such as cloud, network, and security solutions, and claims to have more than 10,000 enterprise clients around the world.

Via TechCrunch

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Sead is a seasoned freelance journalist based in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He writes about IT (cloud, IoT, 5G, VPN) and cybersecurity (ransomware, data breaches, laws and regulations). In his career, spanning more than a decade, he’s written for numerous media outlets, including Al Jazeera Balkans. He’s also held several modules on content writing for Represent Communications.