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The Japanese ICT provider NTT Communications (NTT Com) has admitted to a serious security breach that resulted in the loss of information on a total of 17,891 corporate customers.
NTT Communications is a subsidiary of the telecommunications group Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) and offers a wide range of cloud, network and security services for companies and public authorities in over 190 countries. According to the company, a previously unknown attacker was able to penetrate internal systems at the beginning of February and read various customer data, including contract and contact details.
Attack in two waves
According to NTT Com, “suspicious communication behavior” was first registered in the network on 5 February. The affected servers were immediately disconnected from the network to prevent further damage. On February 15, however, the company’s security experts discovered that the attacker had already managed to access another system. Here too, countermeasures were taken immediately, it is said.
Extensive customer data stolen
The stolen information includes contract numbers, names of contact persons, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and even postal addresses. According to the company, only corporate customer data was affected. End customer data was not found on the compromised system.
NTT Com now wants to inform all affected customers about the incident. “We will continue to strengthen our security measures and monitoring systems to prevent such incidents in the future and improve the quality of our services,” the company said in an announcement on its website.
It remains to be seen how serious the data loss will be for the affected corporate customers. NTT Com itself has not yet provided any concrete evidence of malicious use of the information obtained.
