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TalkTalk hires BAE Systems to investigate cyber attack
Reuters
October 26, 2015, 2:55 am
A spotlight shines on a company logo at a TalkTalk building in London, Britain October 23, 2015. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth
By Kylie MacLellan
LONDON (Reuters) - British broadband provider TalkTalk said on Sunday it had hired defence company BAE Systems to investigate a cyber attack that may have led to the theft of personal data from its more than 4 million customers.
TalkTalk said on Friday it had received a ransom demand from an unidentified party for the attack, which has led to calls for greater regulation of how companies and public bodies manage personal data.
"BAE Systems are supporting us as we investigate this week's cyber attack," a spokeswoman for TalkTalk said, declining to give further details due to the ongoing investigation.
A spokeswoman for BAE's Applied Intelligence division said the company's cyber-specialists were analysing "vast quantities" of data to help establish how the breach happened and what information was stolen.
The Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit is also conducting a criminal investigation into the attack.
While TalkTalk said on Saturday it did not believe the information accessed would enable hackers to steal money from its customers, British newspapers on Sunday carried stories of individuals who said callers posing as TalkTalk employees had taken money from their bank accounts.
Many customers took to social media to complain about their treatment following the attack, TalkTalk's third data breach this year, with media also reporting some had been told they faced hundreds of pounds in fees to leave the provider.
Britain's Information Commissioner watchdog, which can impose fines of up to 500,000 pounds, has said it is looking into the incident but security experts said the prevalence of cyber crime showed more needed to be done.
Data released by the Office for National Statistics this month showed there were nearly 2.5 million incidents of cyber crime in the year to June 2015.
Simon Moores, chair of the International eCrime Congress and a former government technology ambassador, said so far the commissioner had proved "somewhat toothless".
"The Information Commissioner needs to have more powers to reflect the direction of travel ... at a time of rampant identity theft and exploitation of financial details," Moores told Reuters.
He said Britain should give responsibility for information security to a single minister rather than have it spread across several government departments.
"You need to encourage a culture and a level of responsibility where all large organisations ... take serious ownership and responsibility for the privacy of people’s financial and personal data rather than having a cavalier attitude, which we have seen in so many cases," he said.
TalkTalk cyber hack: Boy, 15, arrested at home in County Antrim, Northern Ireland
He was held on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act
File photo: police have arrested a 15 year old boy on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act, following a major breach of the TalkTalk website Photo: Alamy
By Lucy Clarke-Billings, and David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
7:07PM GMT 26 Oct 2015
Police have arrested a 15-year-old boy in Northern Ireland in connection with the cyber attack on TalkTalk.
The child is now in custody awaiting questioning by detectives after police executed a search warrant at an address in County Antrim earlier on Tuesday, a Scotland Yard spokesman said.
The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was arrested on suspicion of offences under the Computer Misuse Act.
A search of the address is still underway, the spokesman said.
The operation was conducted by officers from the Police Service of Northern Ireland working with detectives from the Metropolitan Police Cyber Crime Unit.
The spokesman said: "On Monday, 26 October, at approximately 4.20pm officers ... executed a search warrant at an address in County Antrim, Northern Ireland.
"At the address, a 15-year-old boy was arrested on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act offences.
"He has been taken into custody at a County Antrim police station where he will later be interviewed.
"A search of the address is ongoing and enquiries continue."
Talk Talk this week conceded that it could face a compensation bill running into millions for customers whose bank accounts were raided after the telecoms company was targeted in a huge cyber-attack.
The company, which has been accused of ignoring warnings that it was vulnerable to such attacks, has admitted that personal data belonging to all its four million customers could have been compromised.
Talk Talk says it is now preparing to investigate thousands of cases in which customers say they have either had their bank accounts raided directly, or have lost money after being persuaded to hand over access to their home computers.
