Portal claims up to 60k Astro customers' data leaked, sold online

Technology portal Lowyat.net has raised concerns over leftover traces from what it previously exposed as one of the biggest data breaches in the country’s history. 

The portal today reported its “crawlers” had in January stumbled upon an offer for sale of confidential personal customer data belonging to pay TV operator Astro.

“The database was specific to Astro IPTV customers, and the seller claimed that they have up to 50,000 customer details, which included the customers' name, installation address, MyKad number, mobile phone number, equipment and portal ID numbers, as well as subscribed package information.

“The price? RM3,000 for 10,000 records, that roughly translates to about RM0.30 per customer,” said the report, adding that the offer for sale also included a sample of about 5,000 records which it found to have been leaked online.

Following its discovery, the portal said it had notified Astro and was reassured that the company would be working with the relevant authorities to contain and protect all confidential information of customers.

It further said Astro at the time had managed to remove all the traces of the data from links that were disclosed to the company although it did not lodge an official report or made the necessary disclosure to their customers on the data breach.

“As the breach had been contained, we did not see any reason to follow up on this issue,” said the portal.

However, the portal said that its “crawlers” had earlier last week once again discovered another offer for sale of Astro customer details, believed to be made by the same seller as it contained a message which read: “Sample data published here have been edited as someone had reported this leak previously and I have managed to push it off to someone else.”

“That statement confirmed our suspicion that this offer for sale was put up by the same individual that we alerted Astro to in January.

“This time, however, aside from the cheeky comment, the price of the personal data has gone up to RM4,500, per 10,000 records,” said the portal.

According to the report, the total number of records offered for sale had also gone up from 50,000 to 60,000 or RM27,000 for 60,000 records.

Malaysiakini has contacted Astro and awaiting its response on the matter. -Mkini