Flagstar Data Breach: Social Security Numbers From Over 1.5 Million Customers Reportedly Stolen

Joseph Henry, Tech Times 21 June 2022, 01:06 pm

Flagstar Bank, one of the largest banks in the United States, has recently announced that the latest data breach affected over 1.5 million customers.

According to the Michigan-based financial service provider, the hackers have stolen Social Security numbers from the users.

Flagstar Data Breach

(Photo : Eduardo Soares from Unsplash)
Flagstar notified its customers that the hackers stole Social Security numbers from over 1.5 million users

Flagstar has confirmed that attackers have infiltrated its network from December 3 to 4, 2021.

Based on the letter that the company recently sent to the customers, the hackers were able to obtain confidential information from the affected users.

"Flagstar recently experienced a cyber incident that involved unauthorized access to our network. Upon learning of the incident, we promptly activated our incident response plan, engaged external cybersecurity professionals experienced in handling these types of incidents, and reported the matter to federal law enforcement," the bank said in the letter.

As of writing, Flagstar did not explain why it took half a year to discover the hacking incident. When Techcrunch reached out to the company spokeswoman Susan Bergesen through email, the bank did not respond to the query.

Additionally, the company did not reveal the exact number of affected users in the data breach. It did not specify the specific systems that were hit during the time.

Regarding this, the Office of the Maine Attorney General received information that the Flagstar hackers hit 1,547,169 individuals in the country.

First Security Issue that Hit Flagstar

The latest case is not the first time that Flagstar encountered a data breach done by hackers. As per ZDNet, the zero-day vulnerability impacted the platform.

According to the report, the incident took place in March 2021. Flagstar later discovered a flaw that gained access to its data on Accellion.

The financial institution was aware of the issue. It said at that time that the confidential details were exposed. There's a chance that the customer's PII was leaked.

Because of this, Flagstar assured that the affected customers would receive credit monitoring for free.

In another hacking incident, a former Amazon employee was found guilty of gaining access to the information of CapitalOne customers.

Tech Times reported that Paige Thompson, who once served as a software engineer on Amazon Cloud, has stolen users' data, including email addresses, bank account information, and Social Security numbers, to name a few.

So far, this data breach has been one of the biggest hacking schemes over the past decade.

Although Thompson is found guilty of stealing private details from the customers, she's not found guilty of device access fraud and identity theft. Thompson is scheduled for her sentence in September.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Joseph Henry