Benzinga | Aug 26, 2021 03:57PM EDT

T-Mobile Hacker Makes Shocking Revelations: WSJ

* The Wall Street Journal reports that the T-Mobile U.S. Inc (NASDAQ:TMUS) hacker made a shocking reveal on the wireless company's security slack that compromised at least 50 million accounts.

* The 21-year old John Binns did it to win attention to his perceived oppression by U.S. government authorities as per his Telegram communication with the WSJ. He was reportedly abducted in Germany and put into a fake mental hospital.

* The breach marks the third major customer data leak that T-Mobile has disclosed in the past two years. An unprotected router exposed on the internet helped Binns carry out the hack, which lifted troves of data around August 4.

* Binns used that entry point to hack into the cellphone carrier's data center outside East Wenatchee, Washington, where stored credentials provided him access to over 100 servers.

* Binns showed that he could access accounts linked to the IRDev online personality, which shared screenshots depicting access into T-Mobile's network.

* Security research firm Unit221B believed the IRDev alias was responsible for the T-Mobile hack because someone using the handle reached out to online criminals to sell the data before the hack had been made public. The firm reported the hack to T-Mobile on August 13, followed by the company's acknowledgment after two days.

* In 2020, Binns prosecuted the Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other federal agencies to compel them to fulfill his request for information about FBI investigations of botnet attacks.

* Binns reportedly first learned to find zero-day or previously undisclosed software flaws by figuring out cheats for videogames.

* Price Action: TMUS shares traded lower by 1.61% at $137.61 on the last check Thursday.

* Photo by S. Hermann & F. Richter from Pixabay