The United Kingdom telecommunications company TalkTalk has announced last week that it has been hacked. The cyberattack puts to risk the company's over four million customers. The hack has caused customers' banking data and account confirmation to be stolen. On Monday, a fifteen-year old boy has been arrested in relation to the cyberattack.
According to a report from The Guardian, the arrest has been made at about 4:20 pm on Monday, and the boy is now under police custody. TalkTalk has said on Saturday that the amount of information stolen from the data breach is lower than feared. While such is the case, TalkTalk executives and security watchdogs agree that the attack was "very serious" and had potential to cause great damages.
Investigation is still ongoing and is being done by the Metropolitan police and the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO). A spokesperson for the ICO said, "Our investigations into previous incidents are ongoing, and it wouldn’t be appropriate to presume a company had breached the Data Protection Act until our enquiries are complete," adding that organizations should make sure that they have adequate security to protect their customers.
TalkTalk said in a statement, "We know this has been a worrying time for customers and we are grateful for the swift response and hard work of the police. We will continue to assist with the ongoing investigation." The company also urged its customers to visit the TalkTalk website for updates. Whether customers can and will immediately terminate their TalkTalk contracts following the incident is still undetermined.
The firm said that it continues to take measures to prevent the hack from affecting other customers. TalkTalk said that it has already emailed every customer and has restored most of the services. The company stressed that it takes customer security very seriously. "We constantly review and update our systems to make sure they're as secure as possible and we're taking all the necessary steps to understand this incident and to protect them as best we can against similar attacks in future."
