Bell has issued a press release in response to claims they were hacked by NullCrew:
Bell today announced that 22,421 user names and passwords and 5 valid credit card numbers of Bell small-business customers were posted on the Internet this weekend. The posting results from illegal hacking of an Ottawa-based third-party supplier’s information technology system.
In line with our strict privacy and security policies, Bell is contacting affected small business customers, has disabled all affected passwords, and has informed appropriate credit card companies. We continue to work with the supplier as well as law enforcement and government security officials to investigate the matter.
Bell’s own network and IT systems were not impacted. The issue does not affect Bell residential, mobility or enterprise business customers
With more than 21 million customer connections, Bell is Canada’s largest communications company, providing consumers and business customers with leading TV, Internet, wireless, home phone and business communications solutions. For more information, please visit Bell.ca.
DataBreaches.net asked @NullCrew_FTS to respond to Bell’s claim that it was a third party supplier who got hacked and not them. I’ll update this post with their response if we get one. In the interim, this is a useful reminder as to why I don’t just take claims of hacks as proven or “verified” based solely on the hackers’ claims or data, as the data may have come from another source.
Update 1: @NullCrew_FTS’s response to my inquiry about Bell’s claim that it was a third party who got hacked, not them:
@PogoWasRight Quite a laughable claim, Bell actually knows of the breach, they knew the vulnerable section of the website for two weeks.
— NullCrew (@NullCrew_FTS) February 2, 2014
The data dump has also been re-uploaded to the Internet on a mirror site.
I’ll keep trying to get additional details. Meanwhile, Bell has also posted their statement to their website.