PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC – The personal information of Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley, including his passport number as well as his date of birth and a post office box address, are among documents found to have been compromised in the cyberattack on the Telecommunication Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT), the Trinidad Guardian newspaper has reported.
The paper said that it had obtained a copy of the 6GB of data from TSTT, which was uploaded to the dark web following a cyberattack on the company on October 9, and was able to verify this. It said the data bundle includes scans, a list of names, and credentials.
The paper said that Prime Minister Rowley asked to comment and was sent a copy of the information, which the newspaper could source and verify but had not responded.
“The Prime Minister is one of hundreds of customers whose data has been posted online following the data breach at the telecommunications company,” the paper reported, adding that “as of yesterday, the data—which contains 1.2 million names—had been downloaded over 13,000 times from the dark web”.
The story by the newspaper comes as Minister of Public Utilities Marvin Gonzales, in a statement on Sunday, said he was “deeply concerned” about the cyberattack.
Gonsalves said that digital security invasions were becoming increasingly frequent worldwide and that while no organization or individual was immune to such attacks, the breach of TSTT’s digital security apparatus “is a grave concern to the Government.
“The gravity of the situation warrants a thorough and full-scale investigation to ascertain the facts and circumstances that caused the breach, TSTT’s communications regarding the matter, and the actions the organization is (and has been) taking to reduce the possibility of future cyber incursions.
“I have therefore spoken with the chairman of TSTT and mandated that the board of directors commissions an independent inquiry into the matter and make public the facts and findings, in so far as the details do not compromise TSTT’s customer confidentiality or further put at risk the integrity of TSTT’s data or digital infrastructure,” the Public Utilities Minister added.
TSTT last Friday acknowledged that information on some of its customers had been captured following a cyberattack last month.
“During the past seven days, TSTT has been working with its international cyber security experts and has undertaken a rigorous examination of data published on the dark web after a ransomware group claimed ownership of a cyberattack on the telecommunications company.
“Although the published material was easily accessible, the corroboration process was time-consuming because it required cross-referencing data across multiple extensive databases to verify sources. With the support of our cyber security consultants, the company has determined that the data released contains largely identifying information, and TSTT apologizes to those customers whose information was accessed by these cyber terrorists,” the company said in a statement.
The telecommunications company said that it is still scrutinizing the data but that what had been stolen represents less than one percent of the petabytes of data the company produces and stores.
“Moreover, it represents information from a small subset of TSTT’s customer base. A single customer could generate hundreds or thousands of records of non-critical, non-sensitive transactions. The majority of TSTT’s customers’ information was not accessed,” TSTT added,
Late last month, international hackers Ransomexx announced it had infected TSTT with ransomware and stole as many as six gigabytes (GB) of its data, including names, e-mail addresses, national ID numbers, phone numbers, and “a lot of other sensitive data.”
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