TalkTalk has received a ransom demand from someone claiming to be responsible for a cyber attack in which millions of customers bank details may have been stolen. TalkTalk, one of Britain's biggest communications companies, announced last night that it had suffered a 'significant and sustained cyber attack' in which the bank details and credit card information of its four million customers may have been accessed.
The company said this morning that it has now been sent a ransom demand over the cyber attack.
A spokesman for the firm said: 'We can confirm we were contacted by someone claiming to be responsible and seeking payment.' TalkTalk's chief executive Dido Harding told the BBC: 'Yes, we have been contacted by - I don't know whether it's an individual or a group purporting to be the hacker.
'I personally received a contact from someone purporting - as I say, I don't know whether they are or are not - to be the hacker, looking for money.'
Mrs Harding previously said the company had assumed a worst case scenario that all the personal data relating to its four million customers was compromised until they could confirm exactly what was taken. It came after an expert on computer crime claimed that an extremist group based in the former Soviet Union had claimed responsibility.
Adrian Culley, a former detective in the Met's cyber crime unit, told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: 'They are claiming to be from Soviet Russia and be an Islamic cyber jihadi group. They have posted [online] information that appears to be TalkTalk customer private information.'
It came after a garbled message was put online which purported to be from those behind the hack.
It stated: 'We Have adapted To The Security measures Of The Web,, We Cannot Be Stopped... We Will Teach our Children To Use The Web For Allah.. Your Hands Will Be Covered In Blood.. Judgement Day Is Soon.
'WE Are In The Soviet Russia And Near Place, Your Europe, WE control Asia, We Control AMERICA.' The accuracy of the information has, however, not been verified.
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