Vodafone got hacked, putting almost 2,000 customer bank details at risk of being exposed.
As reported by The Guardian, hackers may have accessed the bank account details of nearly 2,000 Vodafone customers, the company has announced.
The mobile phone provider said that exactly 1,826 accounts were accessed, which unfortunately provided criminals with customers' names, mobile numbers, bank sort codes and the last four digits of their bank accounts.
According to a Vodafone spokesman, "This incident was driven by criminals using email addresses and passwords acquired from an unknown source external to Vodafone. Vodafone's systems were not compromised or breached in any way."
Furthermore, the company said an attempt had been made to access some customers' account details between midnight on Wednesday and midday on Thursday.
According to The Times, Vodafone then began an investigation and informed the National Crime Agency, Ofcom and the Information Commissioner's Office on Friday night.
"Whilst our security protocols were fundamentally effective, we know that 1,827 customers have had their accounts accessed, potentially giving the criminals involved the customer's name, their mobile telephone number, their bank sort code, the last four digits of their bank account," it said.
"Our investigation and mitigating actions have meant that only a handful of customers have been subject to any attempts to use this data for fraudulent activity on their Vodafone accounts."
In addition, the company representative clarified that no credit or debit card details were accessed and the information obtained by the criminals "cannot be used directly to access customers' bank accounts."
The spokesman also said, "However, this information does leave these 1,827 customers open to fraud and might also leave them open to phishing attempts," adding that "These customers' accounts have been blocked and affected customers are being contacted directly to assist them with changing their account details."
However, Vodafone was reported to have contacted the banks of the affected customers to alert them. Hack-related crimes are on the rise recently and this revelations just follows the recent cyber-attack suffered by another telecoms company - TalkTalk just earlier this month.
In a related report by Telegraph, it has also emerged that online comments by TalkTalk representative may have unwittingly encouraged hackers to test the telecom firm's cyber defences in the run up to the latest hacking attack.
One of the firm's customer service representatives also wrote on Twitter that information about some of TalkTalks customers held by Carphone Warehouse data systems may not have been encrypted.
