Iran Police Confirm Hacking and Data Leak of 20 Million Irancell Users
Iran’s police have confirmed the hacking and disclosure of data belonging to 20 million Irancell telephone subscribers and stated they are pursuing those responsible for the breach.
Colonel Hossein Ramezani, the legal and international deputy of the Police Cyber Space Command (FATA), said on July 2 to the Mehr News Agency that “recently an individual, through designing a bot on one of the mobile social networks, has disclosed old information of subscribers of that operator [Irancell], and immediately the legal department of the telephone operator filed a complaint in the judiciary against the bot creator and information disseminator.”
Ramezani stated that “currently there is no cause for concern, and from a technical and specialized perspective, this operator has provided adequate security for maintaining and respecting the privacy of its users.”
The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology also announced that the bot had been blocked.
The Etemad newspaper, published in Tehran, reported in its today’s edition that for the past two days “a Telegram bot was publicly disclosing private information of Irancell number holders, such as name, surname, national ID code, city of residence, home address and postal code, when Irancell numbers were entered.”
Officials of the Communications Ministry have confirmed that the theft of Irancell subscriber data occurred two years ago, but the Etemad newspaper states that Irancell had kept the data theft concealed during this period, which according to the newspaper “could create conditions for various types of fraud.”
According to reports from Iranian media, Irancell has conditioned its explanation of the hack and disclosure of subscriber information on “completion of its investigation.”
Source: BBC
