TSTT acknowledges some customers information captured during cyberattack

PORT OF SPAIN (CMC):

The Telecommunications Services of Trinidad and Tobago (TSTT) Friday acknowledged that information on some of its customers had been captured following a cyberattack last month.

“During the past seven days, TSTT has been working with its international cyber-security experts and has undertaken a rigorous examination of data published on the dark web after a ransomware group claimed ownership of a cyberattack on the telecommunications company.

“Although the published material was easily accessible, the corroboration process was time-consuming because it required cross-referencing data across multiple extensive databases to verify sources. With the support of our cyber security consultants, the company has determined that the data released contains largely identifying information, and TSTT apologises to those customers whose information was accessed by these cyber terrorists,” the company said in a statement.

The telecommunications company said that it is still scrutinising the data, but that what had been stolen represents less than one per cent of the petabytes of data the company produces and stores.

Last weekend, international hackers Ransomexx announced it had infected TSTT with ransomware and stole as many as six gigabytes (GB) of its data, including names, e-mail addresses, national ID numbers, phone numbers and “a lot of other sensitive data”.

Ransomexx said it is in possession of the stolen data, showing a CSV file with detailed information from more than 800,000 TSTT customers.

But in a statement on Monday, TSTT said while it had been a recent victim of a cyberattack, “there was no loss or compromise of customer data, no data was deleted from TSTT’s databases or manipulated.