Unknown Hackers Breach Google Fi Customer Data - 1

Unknown Hackers Breach Google Fi Customer Data

  • Written by Ari Denial Cybersecurity & Tech Writer

As a result of a recent cyberattack, threat actors compromised Google Fi customer data. The incident is probably linked to the recent massive T-Mobile data breach in January.

In an email sent by Google Fi to its users, they have mentioned that “suspicious activity involving a third-party customer support system and a limited amount of Google Fi customer data.”

According to Google, “the data does not contain your name, date of birth, email address, payment card information, social security number or tax IDs, driver’s license or other forms of government ID, or financial account information, passwords or PINs that you may use for Google Fi or the contents of any SMS messages or calls.”

Lior Yaari (CEO and co-founder of Grip Security) said, “Data stolen in this breach is going to fuel numerous attacks in the future. However, the victims can take a little solace that their payment information or PINs were not stolen.” He also added that “the hackers can potentially still do a lot of damage by having access to the users’ phone numbers and SIM serial card numbers, including taking over your phone number. Once the hackers take over your phone number, they can use it for illicit purposes or even bypass two-factor authentication that uses SMS.”

Google Fi users do not have to take any further action, and no unauthorized access has occurred to Google’s systems or systems overseen directly by Google.

This is the second major cyberattack in less than two years, following a 2021 incident that compromised the personal information of an estimated 76.6 million people.

In the last T-Mobile breach, hackers only stole basic information like customer billing addresses, names, phone numbers, and emails. Just to be safe, Yaari suggested that affected customers should at least consider changing their SIM cards.

Google suggested its customers secure sensitive information by taking these precautions:

  • Manage which apps have access to your phone’s data to prevent unwanted access
  • Update all apps and operating systems on mobile devices
  • Enable 2-step verification
  • Make sure all your accounts have unique and strong passwords
The Progress Data of 1,00,000 Players Was Exposed by the RPG Guidus - 2

The Progress Data of 1,00,000 Players Was Exposed by the RPG Guidus

  • Written by Ari Denial Cybersecurity & Tech Writer

Guidus, a popular mobile role-playing game (RPG), leaks information about its users’ game progress.

Cybernews researched and discovered that the sensitive data had been hardcoded into the Guidus app, exposing it to data leaks. There are over 100k downloads of Guidus on the Google Play App store. It is a famous pixel RPG game for mobile devices. Over 16k reviewers have given this app a rating of 4.2 out of 5. The game requires the player to fight their way through dungeons to reclaim the palace and rescue the true heir to the kingdom.

The game had a good reputation and appeared to be a legitimate application, but now it has been confirmed that millions of users’ game progress data have been leaked. “The app spilled information about users’ game progress, including anonymized tokens used by gamers as ‘in-game’ curries and as digital markers to track progress. If the data leaked had not been backed up and a malicious actor had chosen to delete it, it is possible that the user’s progress in the game would have been permanently lost without the possibility of recovery,” said Cybernews.

“Hardcoding sensitive data into the client side of an Android app is a bad idea, in most cases, it can be easily accessed through reverse engineering,” they added. The hackers might be able to access even more sensitive data about the player if they can access those keys.

Here are the keys found hardcoded into the client side of the app:

  • firebase_database_url, gcm_defaultSenderId
  • default_web_client_id, google_api_key
  • google_app_id
  • google_crash_reporting_api_key
  • google_storage_bucket

According to Cybernews, over 33,000 Android apps were analyzed earlier this year and the most sensitive hardcoded secrets left exposed were API keys used to authorize projects, Firebase dataset links, and Google Storage buckets.

Business, lifestyle, health and fitness, tools, and education are the top five app categories that contain the most hardcoded personal data.