The ShinyHunters extortion group has now published the Charter Communications data it stole, after the telecom giant apparently refused to pay. Earlier reporting put the breach at 4.9 million HIBP-confirmed unique accounts; ShinyHunters' leak is described as potentially impacting up to 5 million customers. Charter is one of the largest US telecoms, providing internet, cable, mobile, and phone services to residential and business customers under the Spectrum brand. The data was originally exfiltrated via voice-phishing of a Microsoft Entra account on April 1 and a Salesforce export. With the data now public rather than merely claimed, the phishing and identity-theft risk to affected customers rises sharply.
HIBP has confirmed 4.9 million unique accounts (4,851,517 email addresses) were affected by the Charter Communications breach disclosed earlier this week. The ShinyHunters extortion gang initially claimed 42 million records exfiltrated from Charter's Salesforce instance via voice-phishing of a Microsoft Entra account on April 1; the unique-account count is lower because individuals appeared on multiple records (customer + business + plan-info). Charter publicly denies that CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information) or sensitive personal data was taken. The HIBP entry refines the scope to a defender-actionable figure and lets customers and IR teams check exposure across their workforce.
TrustStrike Labs