A treasure trove of customer data, allegedly stolen from mobile carrier US Cellular, has been offered up for free on the dark web.
A dark web hacker claims to have obtained the stolen data belonging to 144 thousand US Cellular mobile customers and is now offering it up for free on the popular black market leak site BreachForums.
The hacker, known on the site as IntelBroker, posted a download link – accompanied by the official US Cellular logo, on BreachForums Wednesday morning.
The Cybernews research team confirmed the US Cellular website was off line at some point Wednesday morning, but has since been restored.
IntelBroker – gender not disclosed – has logged nearly 500 posts since joining the community in October 2022. They also boast a solid 1900+ reputation rating among fellow hackers, according to their BreachForums profile.
Their profile signature reads, “I release mostly free databases. Keep me alive by donating.”
IntelBroker claims the download link will reveal a database of 144K customers belonging to U.S. Cellular, stolen by hackers just last month.
Sensitive information contained in the database includes the customer subscriber key, subscriber ID, account key, full name and business name, account activation date, current cellular plan and price, device manufacturer and model, current balance, and whether the user is enrolled in autopay and/or has an insurance policy on their device.
Our team examined the linked datasheet and found only 114k number lines, about 40 thousand less than advertised.
Since IntelBroker also noted they were too lazy to remove duplicates from the file, the research team concluded the total number of accounts was most likely four times less than what the hacker originally claimed.
Cybernews has reached out to US Cellular for confirmation of a January 2023 breach, but is still waiting for a response at this time.
It is not clear if the purported theft could be linked to a US Cellular data breach from December 2021.
This is the data sample IntelBroker posted under the BreachForums heading, “U.S. Cellular Database, Leaked – Download.”
IntelBroker has targeted other cellular carriers in the past, according to The CyberPress news outlet, including Verizon and AT&T.
The supposed US Cellular customer leak comes on the heels of two other mobile carrier breaches announced in the past month.
On January 5, T-Mobile alerted 37 million customers that their data had been compromised after suspicious activity was found in their network systems.
This week, Google Fi discovered their customer data had also been breached in connection with the T-Mobile hack. Google Fi uses both T-Mobile and US Cellular as carriers for their primary network coverage.
US Cellular is the fourth largest carrier in the US.
If a January 2023 breach of US Cellular breach is confirmed, there could be a strong possibility it is also connected to the T-Mobile incident.
