Someone is selling account information for 21 million customers of ParkMobile, a mobile parking app that’s popular in North America. The stolen data includes customer email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, license plate numbers, hashed passwords and mailing addresses.
We first heard about the breach from Gemini Advisory, a New York City based threat intelligence firm that keeps a close eye on the cybercrime forums. Gemini shared a new sales thread on a Russian-language crime forum that included my ParkMobile account information in the accompanying screenshot of the stolen data.
Included in the data were my email address and phone number, as well as license plate numbers for four different vehicles we have used over the past decade.
Asked about the sales thread, Atlanta-based ParkMobile said the company published a notification on Mar. 26 about “a cybersecurity incident linked to a vulnerability in a third-party software that we use.”
“In response, we immediately launched an investigation with the assistance of a leading cybersecurity firm to address the incident,” the notice reads. “Out of an abundance of caution, we have also notified the appropriate law enforcement authorities. The investigation is ongoing, and we are limited in the details we can provide at this time.”
The statement continues: “Our investigation indicates that no sensitive data or Payment Card Information, which we encrypt, was affected. Meanwhile, we have taken additional precautionary steps since learning of the incident, including eliminating the third-party vulnerability, maintaining our security, and continuing to monitor our systems.”
Asked for clarification on what the attackers did access, ParkMobile confirmed it included basic account information – license plate numbers, and if provided, email addresses and/or phone numbers, and vehicle nickname.
“In a small percentage of cases, there may be mailing addresses,” spokesman Jeff Perkins said.
ParkMobile doesn’t store user passwords, but rather it stores the output of a fairly robust one-way password hashing algorithm called bcrypt, which is far more resource-intensive and expensive to crack than common alternatives like MD5. The database stolen from ParkMobile and put up for sale includes each user’s bcrypt hash.
“You are correct that bcrypt hashed and salted passwords were obtained,” Perkins said when asked about the screenshot in the database sales thread.
“Note, we do not keep the salt values in our system,” he said. “Additionally, the compromised data does not include parking history, location history, or any other sensitive information. We do not collect social security numbers or driver’s license numbers from our users.”
ParkMobile says it is finalizing an update to its support site confirming the conclusion of its investigation. But I wonder how many of its users were even aware of this security incident. The Mar. 26 security notice does not appear to be linked to other portions of the ParkMobile site, and it is absent from the company’s list of recent press releases.
It’s also curious that ParkMobile hasn’t asked or forced its users to change their passwords as a precautionary measure. I used the ParkMobile app to reset my password, but there was no messaging in the app that suggested this was a timely thing to do.
So if you’re a ParkMobile user, changing your account password might be a pro move. If it’s any consolation, whoever is selling this data is doing so for an insanely high starting price ($125,000) that is unlikely to be paid by any cybercriminal to a new user with no reputation on the forum.
More importantly, if you used your ParkMobile password at any other site tied to the same email address, it’s time to change those credentials as well (and stop re-using passwords).
The breach comes at a tricky time for ParkMobile. On March 9, the European parking group EasyPark announced its plans to acquire the company, which operates in more than 450 cities in North America.
T-Mobile is warning that a data breach has exposed the names, date of birth, Social Security number and driver’s license/ID information of more than 40 million current, former or prospective customers who applied for credit with the company. The acknowledgment came less than 48 hours after millions of the stolen T-Mobile customer records went up for sale in the cybercrime underground.
In a statement Tuesday evening, T-Mobile said a “highly sophisticated” attack against its network led to the breach of data on millions of customers.
“Our preliminary analysis is that approximately 7.8 million current T-Mobile postpaid customer accounts’ information appears to be contained in the stolen files, as well as just over 40 million records of former or prospective customers who had previously applied for credit with T-Mobile,” the company wrote in a blog post. “Importantly, no phone numbers, account numbers, PINs, passwords, or financial information were compromised in any of these files of customers or prospective customers.”
Nevertheless, T-Mobile is urging all T-Mobile postpaid customers to proactively change their account PINs by going online into their T-Mobile account or calling customer care at 611. “This precaution is despite the fact that we have no knowledge that any postpaid account PINs were compromised,” the advisory reads.
It is not clear how many people total may be impacted by this breach. T-Mobile hasn’t yet responded to requests for clarification regarding how many of the 7.8 million current customers may also have been affected by the credit application breach.
The intrusion first came to light on Twitter when the account @und0xxed started tweeting the details, and someone on a cybercrime forum began selling what they claimed were more than 100 million freshly hacked records from T-Mobile. The hackers claimed one of those databases held the name, date of birth, SSN, drivers license information, plaintext security PIN, address and phone number of 36 million T-Mobile customers in the United States — all going back to the mid-1990s.
T-Mobile said it was also able to confirm approximately 850,000 active T-Mobile prepaid customer names, phone numbers and account PINs were also exposed.
“We have already proactively reset ALL of the PINs on these accounts to help protect these customers, and we will be notifying accordingly right away. No Metro by T-Mobile, former Sprint prepaid, or Boost customers had their names or PINs exposed,” T-Mobile said. “We have also confirmed that there was some additional information from inactive prepaid accounts accessed through prepaid billing files. No customer financial information, credit card information, debit or other payment information or SSN was in this inactive file.”
T-Mobile said it would pay for two years of identity theft protection services for any affected customers, and that it was offering “an extra step to protect your mobile account with our Account Takeover Protection capabilities for postpaid customers, which makes it harder for customer accounts to be fraudulently ported out and stolen.” Why it wouldn’t make that extra protection standard for all accounts all the time is not entirely clear.
This stolen data is being actively sold, but if the past is any teacher much of it will wind up posted online soon. It is a safe bet that scammers will use some of this information to target T-Mobile users with phishing messages, account takeovers and harassment.
T-Mobile customers should expect to see phishers taking advantage of public concern over the breach to impersonate the company — and possibly even messages that include the recipient’s compromised account details to make the communications look more legitimate.
Data stolen and exposed in this breach may also be used for identity theft. Credit monitoring and ID theft protection services can help you recover from having your identity stolen, but most will do nothing to stop the ID theft from happening. If you want the maximum control over who should be able to view your credit or grant new lines of credit in your name, then a security freeze is your best option.
If you’re a current T-Mobile customer, by all means change your account PIN as instructed. But regardless of which mobile provider you patronize, consider removing your phone number from as many online accounts as you can. Many online services require you to provide a phone number upon registering an account, but in many cases that number can be removed from your profile afterwards.
Why do I suggest this? Many online services allow users to reset their passwords just by clicking a link sent via SMS, and this unfortunately widespread practice has turned mobile phone numbers into de facto identity documents. Which means losing control over your phone number thanks to an unauthorized SIM swap or mobile number port-out, divorce, job termination or financial crisis can be devastating.
