Verizon employees' personal data stolen, ransom demanded

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

It’s unclear 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. Another one confirmed the data, and said she used to work at the firm. Around a dozen other numbers returned voicemails that included the names in the database, suggesting those are also accurate.

The threat actor 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. At that point the threat actor said they gained access to a Verizon internal tool that shows employee’s information, and wrote a script to query and scrape the database.

These employees are idiots and will allow you to connect to their PC under the guise that you are from internal support.

The threat actor said they reached out to Verizon and shared the email that he sent to the firm:

Please feel free to respond with an offer not to leak you’re [sic] entire employee database.

The threat actor said they would like Verizon to pay them $250,000 as a ransom.

A Verizon spokesperson confirmed the threat actor has been in contact with the firm:

A fraudster recently contacted us threatening to release readily available employee directory information in exchange for payment from Verizon. We do not believe the fraudster has any sensitive information and we do not plan to engage with the individual further,” the spokesperson told Motherboard in an email. “As always, we take the security of Verizon data very seriously and we have strong measures in place to protect our people and systems.

Visible, the company, which is owned by Verizon, confirmed the reports that its accounts have been hacked and used to make charges last autumn.