NEW YORK—Verizon Enterprise Solutions, Verizon’s B2B unit, has suffered a data breach involving the theft and resale of customer data, according to a post by security expert Brian Krebs.
Krebs reported that earlier last week a prominent member of a closely guarded underground cybercrime forum posted a new thread advertising the sale of a database containing the contact information on some 1.5 million customers of Verizon Enterprise.
“The seller priced the entire package at $100,000, but also offered to sell it off in chunks of 100,000 records for $10,000 apiece. Buyers also were offered the option to purchase information about security vulnerabilities in Verizon’s website,” wrote Krebs.
Krebs contacted Verizon Enterprise and was told that the company recently identified a security flaw in its site that permitted hackers to steal customer contact information, and that it is in the process of alerting affected customers.
“Verizon recently discovered and remediated a security vulnerability on our enterprise client portal,” the company told Krebs. “Our investigation to date found an attacker obtained basic contact information on a number of our enterprise customers. No customer proprietary network information or other data was accessed or accessible.”
Krebs noted, “It’s a fair bet that if cyber thieves buy all or some of the Verizon Enterprise customer database, some of those customers may be easy marks for phishing and other targeted attacks.”