LONDON-A teenager in Northern Ireland suspected of playing a part in the cyberattack on British telco TalkTalk Telecom Group PLC has been arrested, police here said Monday.
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On Saturday, TalkTalk released a statement on its website, trying to calm fears about the attack, the statement included Dido Harding appearing in a video to try and explain what was going on. His arrest is part of a joint operation between officers in Northern Ireland and Britain, also including National Crime Agency staff.
TalkTalk could be fined up to £500,000 by the Information Commissioners Office for a data breach that puts 4 million customers’ personal details at risk of being stolen.
Attackers had infiltrated TalkTalk’s systems and obtained names, addresses, phone numbers, and TalkTalk account numbers – this information was sold and then used by fraudsters to call customers and obtain their bank details.
Moore said more worrying than the breach itself had been TalkTalk’s response to it.
“We are continuing to work with leading cybercrime specialists and the Metropolitan police to establish exactly what happened and the extent of any information accessed”.
The Met’s Cyber Crime Unit will continue questioning the boy, who has not been charged, while police will continue to search the address in County Antrim. “Virtually every household will have banking or other personal information stored by companies on computer systems and should those systems be compromised it can leave people vulnerable to a range of crimes”.
It was alleged by digital security blogger Brian Krebs that the hackers only asked for $80,000 in a ransom demand sent to TalkTalk.
One customer claimed to BBC Radio 5 Live to have received a “very convincing” call from someone who correctly cited his account number, and suggested that the firm might have been hacked several months ago.
Over the weekend, a few TalkTalk customers reported that money had been taken from their bank accounts.
Harding said it was “too early to say” whether the company will establish a compensation fund to handle the fallout from the attack because it was still unclear how many customers had been affected and to what degree, according to the Guardian.
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CEO Dido Harding acknowledged that the company’s reputation could be damaged following the attack but stressed that it had been the victim of a criminal act rather than guilty of negligence.
