A T-Mobile customer has sued the carrier, blaming Magenta’s lack of security that enabled hackers to steal cryptocurrency from his account last fall. The lawsuit alleges that T-Mobile’s lackluster security didn’t prevent the hackers from gaining access to his wireless account and then transferring it in order to steal his cryptocurrencies worth tens of thousands of dollars.
It’s not uncommon to hear about cryptocurrency heists these days as digital currencies become more popular. Hackers aren’t just targeting individual users, they’re also going after exchanges. Japan’s Coincheck exchange was hacked recently which resulted in $530 million worth of digital currency tokens being stolen.
Carlos Tapang, a resident of Washington state, has accused that T-Mobile “improperly allowed wrongdoers to access” his wireless account on November 7th, 2017. They were then able to cancel his number and transfer it to an AT&T account under their control.
This enabled them to change the password of his cryptocurrency accounts and steal 1,000 OmiseGo tokes and 19.6 BitConnect coins, according to Tapang. “T-Mobile was unable to contain this security breach until the next day,” Tapang alleges, which is when it was able to get the number back from AT&T.
Those who had hacked him exchanged all of his coins for 2.875 bitcoin which were transferred out of the account and possibly sold when the price was around $7000, thus netting them just over $20,000. It merits mentioning here that bitcoin briefly touched highs of almost $20,000 in December last year.
Tapang’s suit alleges that T-Mobile is at fault here because the carrier had said before the incident that it would add a PIN code to his account but it hadn’t done that. He now seeks damages and injunctive relief.
T-Mobile is yet to comment on the matter.
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