Texas-based Frontier Communications, which offers native residential and enterprise telecom providers in 25 states, has shut down its operations within the wake of a cyberattack that resulted within the theft of personally identifiable info (PII).
The breach occurred 4 days in the past on April 14, when it detected a breach by an unauthorized third occasion who had gained entry to “parts of its info expertise atmosphere,” in accordance with an incident submitting with the US Securities & Change Fee (SEC).
As a part of its containment efforts, Frontier took “sure of the corporate’s methods [offline, which] resulted in an operational disruption that might be thought-about materials.” It reported that whereas its core IT atmosphere is up and operating, regular enterprise operations have but to renew; and as of this writing, the telco’s web site was nonetheless offline.
Frontier did not disclose what PII the cyberattacker accessed or who’s affected, nor the suspected nature of the adversary. Telecom firms are a well-liked goal for each financially motivated attackers in addition to superior persistent threats (APT), given the wealthy information repositories they maintain. As an illustration, the Sandman APT was behind a prolific string of assaults final fall bent on stealing call-data information, cell subscriber identification information, and metadata from provider networks.
“The corporate continues to analyze the incident, has engaged cybersecurity specialists, and has notified legislation enforcement authorities,” in accordance with the SEC submitting. “The corporate doesn’t consider the incident within reason more likely to materially affect the corporate’s monetary situation or outcomes of operations.”
