Mr Cooper now says 15M people's data exposed in cyberattack
www.theregister.com
Mortgage lender Mr Cooper has now admitted almost 14.7 million people's private information, including addresses and bank account numbers, were stolen in an earlier IT security breach, which is expected to cost the business at least $25 million to clean up.
The financial firm disclosed a network intrusion in October, and initially said the "isolated" incident "did not affect any of the company's clients' or partners' systems or technology."
In notifications filed with the US states of California and Maine on Friday, the mortgage giant revealed that scope of the cyberattack was much worse than it believed: highly personal records belonging to millions were snatched by one or more miscreants.
"Through our investigation, we determined that there was unauthorized access to certain of our systems between October 30, 2023 and November 1, 2023," according to a notice [PDF] sent to 14,690,284 people. "During this period, we identified that files containing personal information were obtained by an unauthorized party."
This personal information included people's names, addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and bank account numbers.
Those affected include anyone whose mortgage may have been previously acquired or serviced by Mr Cooper, Nationstar Mortgage LLC, Centex Home Equity, or another sister brand or servicing partner. Anyone who previously applied for a home loan with any of these lenders may also be affected, we're told. Mr Cooper was formerly known as Nationstar, and is based in Texas.
While the company says it has not seen any evidence that this data has been used for identity theft or fraud, Mr Cooper said it will continue to monitor the dark web for any evidence that the thieves are sharing, leaking, or otherwise misusing the stolen files. Plus: All affected individuals will receive 24 months of free credit monitoring.
When asked about the breach, a Mr Cooper spokesperson referred The Register to a statement on the biz's website.