Colt Acknowledges Cyber Attack Leading to Customer Data Exposure

British telecommunications and network services provider Colt said that threat actors who breached its internal network gained access to sensitive personal information belonging to its customers.

 

In a data security incident notice published on its website, Colt said that earlier this month, it suffered a significant “technical issue” that caused significant disruption in the company’s daily operation. The telecom provider immediately launched an investigation, with assistance from external cyber security experts, to determine the nature and scope of the incident.

 

In a separate update, Colt said that the “technical issue” resulted from a data security incident on the company’s internal network.

 

To mitigate the effect of the incident, Colt took certain protective measures, including taking several critical systems offline, which caused disruption to some of the support services.

 

A threat actor using the alias ‘cnkjasdfgd,’ who claimed affiliation with the WarLock ransomware gang, has taken responsibility for the attack and has offered to sell a batch of one million documents, allegedly stolen from Colt, for $200,000. The threat actor also leaked sample documents containing financial records, employee and customer information, executive data, internal emails, and software development details.

 

Acknowledging the claims of the threat actor, Colt said that confidential data of its customers was accessed and stolen from the company’s internal network.

 

“A cyber incident has affected our business support systems, which are separate from our customers’ infrastructure. We took immediate proactive measures to ensure the safety of our customers, colleagues, and business, and we proactively notified the relevant authorities.

 

“Through our extensive investigation, we have determined that some data has been taken. We are now aware that the threat actor has accessed certain files that may contain data related to our customers,” Colt said in its latest update.