Boss of hacked talktalk warns of cyber security ‘arms race’

The cyber attack on TalkTalk was “smaller” than originally thought, but customers’ bank account and sort code details may have been accessed, the company’s chief executive says.

All credit card information through the website is encrypted, she said, with the six-middle digits of the card numbers blocked out, making the information worthless to criminals.

TalkTalk has also received criticism over its refusal to allow customers to cancel their contracts for free.

In light of this latest attack, Sky News has compiled a list of basic precautions you can take if you’re a TalkTalk customer.

“We can confirm that we do not store complete credit card details on the website; any credit card details that may have been accessed had a series of numbers hidden and therefore are not usable for financial transactions”, Talk Talk said.

Comment On Sunday morning, embattled TalkTalk boss Dido Harding crassly stated that her company was under no legal obligation to encrypt customers’ sensitive data.

However up to four million customers remain at risk, with experts calling on authorities to investigate as urgently as it would for a large-scale physical theft.

TalkTalk has said it will consider requests on a case-by-case basis later when more information is known.

Ms Harding told the BBC on Friday: “Waiving standard terms and conditions is not something sensible I can do today”. Harding stated that it is too early to say whether the company will offer customers compensation for having their data hacked, whilst the company insisted that the amount of information leaked was “materially lower than first feared'”.

TalkTalk hack: What should I do?

There have been two other data breaches affecting TalkTalk customers in recent months. For those of you who are keeping count at home, this is TalkTalk’s third breach this year.

In February, customers were warned about scammers who managed to steal thousands of account numbers and names from TalkTalk’s computers. The attacks are understood to be unrelated.

A ransom demand sent to the telecoms firm following the attack by someone claiming to be responsible and seeking payment is being investigated by police.

British business leaders on Saturday urged police to prioritize this issue and warned about the impending danger of cyber-crime.