Telecom company Vodafone hacked

By Rudy Takala, Rudy Takala

Published December 20, 2015

Telecom company Vodafone UK was hacked, the company said in a statement over the weekend.

"This incident was driven by criminals using email addresses and passwords acquired from an unknown source external to Vodafone," the company said in the Oct. 31 statement. "We know that 1,827 customers have had their accounts accessed."

The company said the event may have resulted in the theft of names, mobile telephone numbers, the last four digits of bank account numbers and bank routing numbers.

"No credit or debit card numbers or details were obtained," Vodafone added. "The information obtained by the criminals cannot be used directly to access customers' bank accounts." However, the information may be used in phishing attempts and fraud.

It's the second breach of a British telecom company this week. TalkTalk said in a statement on Friday that it had lost 21,000 bank account and routing numbers and more than one million customer email address, in addition to partial information for 28,000 credit and debit cards and 15,000 dates of birth. Three males aged 15, 16 and 20, have been identified as the perpetrators in that attack.