Talktalk......cyber attack

[skipper734]

Since the cyber attack on our website on Wednesday 21st October 2015, we have been working with the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit and world leading cyber crime and security experts, to establish what happened and to understand the extent of the data stolen during the attack. Our investigation continues, but we now know the extent of the data accessed is significantly less than originally suspected.
We can now confirm that the following personal data were accessed:
• Less than 21,000 unique bank account numbers and sort codes.
• Less than 28,000 obscured credit and debit card details. As previously stated, the middle 6 digits had been removed and therefore are not usable for financial transactions e.g. 012345 xxxxxx 6789.
• Less than 15,000 dates of birth.
• Less than 1.2 million email addresses, names and phone numbers.
As we have previously confirmed, the credit and debit card details cannot be used for financial transactions. As an extra precaution, we have shared the affected bank details with the major UK banks so they can take their usual actions to protect accounts in the highly unlikely event that a criminal attempts to defraud them. We can also reassure you that no TalkTalk My Account passwords were accessed.
Continue to keep yourself protected
Our offer of 12 months free credit monitoring alerts is still available. We would encourage you to sign up to Noddle, one of the leading credit reference agencies, using the code TT213.
Even though the scale of the attack is significantly smaller than initially suspected, we would also advise you to be vigilant, and to take all precautions possible to protect yourself from scam phone calls and emails.
We want to make customers aware that we will not call or otherwise contact you regarding this incident and ask for bank details or other financial or personal information.
TalkTalk will also NEVER:
• Ask for your bank details to process a refund. If you are ever due a refund from us, we would only be able to process this if your bank details are already registered on our systems. • Call customers and ask you to download software onto your computer, unless you have previously contacted TalkTalk, discussed and agreed a call back for this to take place. • Send customers emails asking you to provide your full password. We will only ever ask for two digits from it to protect your security.
Once again, we want to reassure you we are taking every precaution to keep your information safe. If you have any questions, please visit www.talktalk.co.uk/secure or call us on 0800 083 2710.
On behalf of everyone at TalkTalk, I would like to apologise to all our customers. We know that we need to work hard to earn back your trust and everyone here is committed to doing that.
Yours sincerely,
Dido Harding Chief Executive Officer

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

have always done that with important passwords, pick a random phrase/acronym to remember it. use first letters, all alpha o's become numeric 0, i's become 1, all too or to would become 2.

i.e

On the eighth day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
eight maids a milking.

0t8d0cmtls2m8mam

Wonder how many Albion supporters now have G0SBTS?

 

[El Presidente]

You would think the government would be critical of TalkTalk's poor security.

In other news:

Dido Harding was a classmate of David Cameron at Oxford.
Dido Harding's husband is a Conservative MP
Dido Harding is one of David Cameron's 'business tsars'
Dido Harding was made a Conservative life peer in 2014.

I'm sure all the above events are unconnected though.