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Investing.com – T-Mobile stock (NASDAQ:TMUS) fell 1% in Thursday’s trading as the hacker who stole data on 50 million of the company’s customers told The Wall Street Journal that the security of the mobile carrier’s network is “awful.”
John Binns, a 21-year-old American who moved to Turkey a few years ago, told WSJ he was behind the security breach that came to light in the second week of this month.
With 104.8 million customers at the end of June, T-Mobile is the country’s third largest carrier. It has Deutsche Telekom (OTC:DTEGY) as its majority shareholder.
The information leak carried social security numbers, phone numbers, names, physical addresses, unique identifier numbers, and driver license information of T-Mobile’s customers, according to a previous report by Vice Media’s Motherboard technology-news site.
As per the WSJ report, stolen data belonged to prospective clients or former customers.
Binns told WSJ he hacked into the cellphone carrier’s data center outside East Wenatchee, Washington, where stored credentials allowed him to access more than 100 servers.
“I was panicking because I had access to something big,” he wrote. “Their security is awful,” he told WSJ.
He declined to comment when asked by WSJ whether he had sold any of the stolen data or whether he was paid to breach T-Mobile.
