FBI Warns of Potential Data Breach Affecting 320,000 Time Warner Cable Customers

You have to give credit when it is due to various law enforcement agencies and security experts when the discovery of a data breach is made in time to warn all those affected. In another case of law enforcement assisting the masses with a potential security breach issue, the FBI has recently warned Time Warner Cable that information of about 320,000 customers may have been compromised.

In what appears to be a data leak, the information of many Time Warning Cable has arrived in the hands of computer hackers and cybercrooks today. Time Warner has responded to several media outlets that they believe the data originated from a breach of its servers. Additionally, as explained by company spokespersons, the data may have been stolen from other firms that handle Time Warner customer information.

As the FBI and Time Warner Cable look into the matter, as the currently do not know the exact severity and causes of the breach, some suspect that the issue may have initiated from individual phishing campaigns that collected information from one user at a time.

To ease the tension of their customers, Time Warner representatives informed everyone that they will be contacting all affected users through email and advising them to change their login passwords to any company associated account. So far, most of the data that looks to have been compromised in the breach is made up of email addresses, specifically, ones that are associated with the companies Road Runner webmail service using the rr.com domain.

The perpetrators in many similar data breaches usually start with black market areas on the Internet. Most of these areas, often made up of secretive forums, harbor many hackers and cybercrooks where they trade, buy or sell customer details that they have made off with from various data breaches. In the case of the recent Time Warner Cable data breach, the 320,000 customer records where they may have made off with email addresses only, could be data that is later sold so the emails may be exploited at a later date. Think of it as a massive phishing campaign that can be started by sending out spam email blasts to 320,000 individuals. Eventually, hundreds to thousands of affected customers are going to bite and end up relinquishing valuable information that could later lead to a handsome payday for the cybercrooks.

There have been many data breach incidents in situations where big businesses entrust third party vendors to safeguard and handle their data. When it comes to the Time Warner Cable, the same can be said as the recent data breach case looks to be the fault of a third party vendor that lacked the proper security measures to thwart an attack on their servers. As the investigation proceeds, yet another lesson should be learned by other companies in similar situations when it comes to customer data.