Verizon possibly suffered a Data Breach

A hacker has obtained a database that includes the full name, email address, corporate ID numbers, and phone number of hundreds of Verizon employees.

It’s not clear that if all the data is accurate or up to date. Motherboard was able to confirm that at least some of the data is legitimate by calling phone numbers in the database. Four people confirmed their full names and email addresses, and said they work at Verizon.

Around a dozen other numbers returned voicemails that included the names in the database, suggesting those are also accurate.

The hacker contacted Motherboard last week to share the information. The anonymous hacker said they obtained the data by convincing a Verizon employee to give them remote access to their corporate computer.

The hacker said they gained access to a Verizon internal tool that shows employee’s information, and wrote a script to query and scrape the databaseThe hacker said they would like Verizon to pay them $250,000 as a reward.

Though the database does not include information such as Social Security Numbers, passwords, or credit card numbers, the stolen information is still potentially dangerous. It could be useful by criminals who want to target the company employees or impersonate an employee while talking to another one to get access to internal tools.

These type of attack would give the hackers the ability to impersonate Verizon employees and, if they’re able to trick them, have full access to systems that could allow them to look up users’ information and transfer their phone numbers in what is commonly known as SIM swapping.