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T-Mobile Hacker Leaks Clients' Data to Sale for 6 BTC

United States Telecommunication giant T-Mobile has suffered a massive breach from its servers, compromising over 100 million customer data.

As reported by Motherboard, the data compromised includes T-Mobile customer’s Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and driver licenses.

According to multiple reports, the hacker is selling a portion of the data containing 30 million social security numbers and driver’s licenses in an underground marketplace for 6 Bitcoin’s, worth approximately $277353.42 per BTC price at the time of writing.

Despite the claims that the company has restricted access to its servers from the malicious actors, the hacker said the stolen data are already backed up in multiple locations.

It is unclear yet how the data was breached, and it appears the vulnerability in T-Mobile systems is a perpetual route being exploited by cybercriminals. Year on year, similar data breach incidents were notably recorded.

Blockchain ecosystems have also been subjected to several hacks recently. The protocol breaches took various forms, like a senior worker whose violation of web safety regulations triggered a hacking vulnerability on the South Korean cryptocurrency exchange, Bithumb’s servers.

The emerging world of decentralised finance has also witnessed the attack in its history when the interoperability protocol Poly Network was hacked. The hacker, named by the network as Mr White Hat, stole about $610 million from Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, and Polygon Network. While the entire hacking ordeal, which lasted for about a week, ended up with the White Hat returning the whole funds, it also showcases that, like T-Mobile, no protocol is safe from cybercriminals.

A deliberate effort to boost transparency in blockchain protocols is known to aid in the recovery of data or funds stolen, unlike other digital systems that big tech firms build on.

Nova Labs Partners with T-Mobile To Rollout Crypto-Powered 5G Service

Nova Labs, the company behind Helium network, a decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) 5G wireless network that provides connectivity for random IoT devices, announced a five-year partnership deal with wireless carrier T-Mobile.

Based on the partnership, Nova Labs and T-Mobile will create a new 5G wireless service called Helium Mobile. The partnership will allow anyone subscribing to Helium Mobile to access Helium’s 5G network and T-Mobile’s wireless network throughout the US.

Helium Mobile will be a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) service that offers two important economic differentiators from traditional services: plans will start at just $5 per month, and users can also optionally earn crypto token rewards for sharing data.

The Helium Mobile 5G wireless service is a big deal because it will allow users to opt into receiving the network’s MOBILE token rewards in exchange for providing anonymized data about their network usage. Boris Renski, co-founder and CEO of Nova Labs, said: “The service will treat such users as contributors, as the data will be used to monitor network quality and availability as it scales—but it’s purely optional.”

The Helium Mobile service will officially launch in the first quarter of 2023. Nova Labs said the service is designed with a bring-your-own-device (BYOD) approach in mind. The firm is working with smartphone makers to introduce “specialized, crypto-friendly cell phone devices that will be more efficient at validating network coverage and earning more Mobile token rewards for their users when compared to generic, BYOD phones.”

How Does It Work?

Although thousands of cryptocurrencies address a wide variety of use cases, relatively few are tapping into the new sector of the Internet of Things (IoT). Iota (MIOTA) is one of the most popular blockless platforms that connect devices with IoT. Helium also emerges as a blockchain-based project with the same use case but uses a different approach.

Helium is described as a blockchain-based network for IoT devices that uses nodes as Hotspots to connect wireless devices to the network. The Helium Token (the native cryptocurrency and protocol token of the Helium blockchain) powers the network and serves as a payout whenever Hotspots transfer connection data across the network.

Helium is working towards creating a reliable, decentralized, and global network for IoT devices that relies on the community of HNT holders. The network consists of nodes, i.e. Hotspots that are run by node operators (who are actually HNT holders). Hosting Hotspots and managing nodes, users are rewarded for participating in the network’s functionality.

At the time of writing, the price of Helium Token (HNT) was trading at US$4.36, down 0.98% for the last 24 hours, with a trading volume of $15.38 million, according to CoinMarketCap.

Over 81% Helium Community Approves Migration to Solana Blockchain

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The Helium Foundation on Thursday announced the migration of its decentralized wireless Internet of Things (IoT) network, the Helium Network, to the Solana blockchain. The foundation approved the decision after a successful community vote on the proposal.

Since its establishment in 2013, the Helium network has been operating on its own blockchain, known as HIP 70.

On Thursday, the foundation disclosed that a majority community vote of 81.41% approved the Helium Improvement Proposal (HIP 70) aimed at developing the network to meet user demand. The proposal requirements demanded participants to stake the Helium native token (HNT) in order to engage in the voting exercise.

According to the final results, 6,177 members voted in favour of the migration by staking some 12 million HNT ($57 million) versus 1,270 members who voted against the proposal.

The Helium Foundation stated that the transition will allow HNT to become more compatible with other projects and crypto applications in non-fungible tokens, decentralized finance (DeFi), and other Web3 applications.

Helium Foundation COO Scott Sigel said: “Solana has a proven track record powering some of the world’s most important decentralized initiatives, and they were an obvious choice for us to partner with. Moving to the Solana blockchain allows us to focus our efforts on scaling the network as opposed to managing the blockchain itself.”

Challenges to be Fixed

The proposal comes after the Helium core developer team recently called for the need to fix various technical issues to improve the network’s capabilities. Last month, the developers acknowledged that there have been challenges facing network participants with much reduced Proof-of-Coverage activity because of network size, blockchain/validator load, and packet delivery issues.

Their announcement came after node hotspot operators in the Helium subreddit in July posted about the dwindling rewards made from their efforts, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment into Helium.

Such criticisms of the Helium blockchain project stirred a strong debate over the company’s long-term prospects.

As a result, the Helium developers made the proposal, dubbed HIP 70, on August 31. They forwarded the HIP 70 proposal to improve data transfer and network coverage abilities. They said the move is aimed to “bring significant economies of scale through the vast range of composable Solana developer tools, features, and applications.”

They said the move aims to scale Helium to meet the demands of builders and users as part of efforts to accelerate the decentralized wireless network of Helium 5G and over 945,000 Internet of Things (IoT) user-managed hotspot devices across the world.

According to the Helium Foundation, the migration will see Helium’s ecosystem tokens, including HNT, IOT and MOBILE tokens and Data Credits (DCs), soon be issued on Solana. Once the migration is completed, Helium will roll out a new version of the Helium Wallet App to be available for users, the foundation said.

The news comes after Nova Labs, the company behind the Helium network, on Tuesday formed a five-year deal with T-Mobile’s 5G services to embark on filling the gaps in Helium’s coverage. Blockchain.News reported the matter.

Helium is an open-source blockchain network designed to power Internet of Things (IoT) devices with wireless connectivity. Founded in 2013, the decentralized wireless network has grown to become a huge continuous wireless network across the globe. Helium has a presence in 65,000 cities and 170 countries, focusing on serving the Internet of Things (IoT) around the world.

Germany’s Deutsche Telekom Rolls Out Ethereum Validator Node, Staking Support

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Telecom giant Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile, announced on Thursday the launch of its Ethereum staking services.

The German company stated that its T-Systems Multimedia Solutions (MMS) division is working with a liquid Ethereum 2.0 staking service and DAO StakeWise to operate a staking pool that allows customers to participate in validating transactions without having to run a validator themselves. Deutsche Telekom is also participating in the governance of the StakeWise decentral autonomous organization (DAO).

In a statement, the Head of Blockchain Solutions Center at T-Systems MMS, Dirk Röder, said, “As a node operator, our entry into liquid staking and the close collaboration with a DAO is a novelty for Deutsche Telekom.”

Deutsche Telekom believes liquid staking through its new service will attract customers because, like other such services such as Lido, the offering helps customers save time and the hassle of having to set up a validator node for themselves. Furthermore, liquid staking is cheaper than ordinary Ethereum staking which requires users to set up their own node and they need to stake at least 32 ETHs, which at today’s price is around $43,338 in order to participate in staking activity.

Deutsche Telekom has been actively participating in the crypto landscape for some time. Last year, the company entered into the crypto space by investing in Celo, a San Francisco-based blockchain startup that offers cryptocurrency on mobile services.

Last month, T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, partnered with Nova Labs to launch a new 5G wireless service called Helium Mobile that aims to allow users to earn rewards in crypto tokens for sharing data.

Why Users Are Preferring Liquid Staking

Ethereum staking is the process in which users lock up their funds to help validate blocks and secure the Ethereum network. In return, they receive staking rewards in the form of more ETH. However, many limitations still hinder users from participating in the staking process. For example, investors are required to deposit a minimum of 32 ETH collateral (worth approximately $43,338) to become a validator. This is quite expensive for ordinary investors.

Liquid staking resolves such limitations as it allows users to stake any amount of Ethereum and to effectively unstake their ETH without the unnecessary requirements of transactions. As a result, Ethereum staking has been gaining more popularity as it is an alternative way in which users are locking up their stakes and earning rewards.

Late last month, Coinbase launched its liquid staking token, called Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (cbETH), ahead of the Ethereum blockchain’s Merge – a liquid staking service that allows users to generate extra yield on top of standard rewards for staking or locking crypto tokens in a network. Binance, Lido Finance, and Kraken are also other institutions that run major Ethereum staking pools.