ShinyHunters extorts Charter Communications after data breach

Charter Communications has confirmed a data breach following a threat from the ShinyHunters extortion group to leak stolen data. The telecommunications giant, which serves millions of customers under the Spectrum brand, stated it is alerting authorities and claims no sensitive personal or customer proprietary network information was exfiltrated, based on information published by Bleeping Computer.

The incident came to light after Charter was listed on ShinyHunters' data leak site, where the group claimed to have stolen 40 million records. ShinyHunters alleges they gained access on April 1 through a voice phishing attack that compromised an employee's Microsoft Entra account, subsequently exporting customer data from Charter's Salesforce instance. The stolen information reportedly includes names, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, plan details, and some customer proprietary network information, along with support ticket data.

This attack method is consistent with ShinyHunters' broader campaign targeting single sign-on accounts to access SaaS applications like Salesforce for data extortion. This follows previous attacks by the group on entities like the education technology firm Instructure, which also involved data theft and potential ransom payments.

Source: Bleeping Computer