Even They Get Hacked
You may have heard Kim Komando mention this story on the radio, but it bears repeating.
Brinks is one of the biggest names in home security. ADT is also synonymous with security. It’s their stock in trade, literally.
And both got hacked within a few months of each other, exposing more than 10 million people in total.
Lest you think some evil genius wrote computer code and got into those systems…apparently it was a convincing voice on the phone to company employees who were trying to be helpful.
On July 13, a group called ShinyHunters phoned Brinks employees and sweet-talked them through a fake login…and once in the system, they took nearly 5 million records. Brinks figured it out and refused to pay ransom, so the bad guys dumped some 41GB of data on the dark web. ADT fell victim to the same stunt in April; a caller impersonated an employee and got another employee to let them into the system…that led to 5.5 million people being exposed, with 11 GB dumped on the dark web when ADT refused to pay. By the way, that was ADT’s third disclosed breach in the past two years.
No customer data like social security numbers were included, nor were any credit cards. And security alarm systems were not impacted, so if you have an alarm system and it goes off, it’s legitimate.
This time, that is. When the folks who pledge to be safeguards of our security are so easily compromised…what confidence should we have in anything like that?
