(ConservativeHub.com) – Xfinity, which is owned by Comcast, has suffered a big data breach that has resulted in the exposure of data for more than 35 million customers.
In December, the service put out a notice to its customers warning them that the Xfinity internal systems had been accessed without the proper authorization. The vulnerability that allowed for this to occur was announced by Citrix, a software provider, between Oct. 16 and 19. According to the report, Xfinity noted that they had first found evidence of the “suspicious activity” on Oct. 25. At the time, it noted that it was likely that customer information had been acquired during the breach.
On Dec. 6, the company concluded that the information exposed not only included the passwords and usernames of certain users, but also answers to their security questions, contact information, dates of birth, and in some cases, the last four digits of Social Security numbers.
Scamicide.com editor and attorney Steven Weisman was reported by The Hill saying that this breach is a huge problem, as hackers who have acquired the last four digits of someone’s Social Security Number could easily find out what the first five digits are as they relate to the location they reside in and the location that the card was issued.
According to The Hill, the government started to issue randomized Social Security numbers in 2011 as a way to prevent this problem.
Weisman also said that in this case, the hackers didn’t breach the internal system but instead implanted malware to a software purchased by Xfinity to achieve this.
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