It’s pretty shitty to be a TalkTalk customer right now.
Earlier this week, the broadband provider suffered a sustained cyber attack that resulted in potentially millions of customer’s information – including card details – being stolen by internet terrorists. It has since emerged that Russian Jihadis sent a message to TalkTalk CEO Dido Harding claiming responsibility for the attack.
While people remained sceptical of the legitimacy of the message, it now appears they weren’t fucking around.
Hilary Foster, a barrister’s clerk from south-west London, was shocked to find that her bank account had been used to purchase £600 worth of goods from Tesco and shoe retailer Office. When she phoned the bank to ask them to block her account, she was immediately asked if she was a TalkTalk customer.
Other accounts claim that the hackers slowed TalkTalk’s broadband to a snails pace on Wednesday morning, and as customer Iain Frater told the Mail Online, that wasn’t the worst part – the terrorists phoned him pretending to be TalkTalk support.
He said:
They had all the details you would expect, including name, address, phone number and account number. The guy really sounded like he was in a TalkTalk call centre.
TalkTalk still don’t seem to know what’s been leaked or how much of it, and Harding has admitted she didn’t know whether customer’s details were encrypted – something that is considered common practice when dealing with sensitive customer information.
Scotland Yard’s cyber crime unit and the National Crime Agency are said to be investigating the case, though no arrests have been made. It’s also unclear at this time whether the motive for the attack really was Islamic extremism, or bank card fraud.
Mark is the Gaming Editor for UNILAD. Having grown up a gaming addict, he’s been deeply entrenched in culture and spends time away from work playing as much as possible. Mark studied music at University and found a love for journalism through going to local gigs and writing about them for local and national publications.