The names of the coun­try’s Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds, Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher and Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les are all in­clud­ed on a list of cus­tomers whose per­son­al in­for­ma­tion was leaked dur­ing a da­ta breach at TSTT.

Oth­er Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters in­clud­ing Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell, Min­is­ter of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Has­sel Bac­chus, Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie, Min­is­ter of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Sham­fa Cud­joe, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox, Min­is­ter of Trade Paula Gopee-Scoon, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan al­so had their in­for­ma­tion leaked.

The names of TSTT’s present chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Lisa Agard and its for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive Ronald Wal­cott are al­so on the list.

The list con­tains 1.2 mil­lion en­tries.

In some in­stances, there are mul­ti­ple en­tries. For Min­is­ter Im­bert, there are three en­tries and one list­ed as of­fice. For Sinanan, there are three en­tries and two are list­ed as Ro­han Sinanan Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed.

In oth­ers, there is on­ly one.

Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was al­so in­clud­ed in the list. The Ex­cel doc­u­ment al­so had his birth date and a PO box ad­dress for him as Prime Min­is­ter.

It was down­loaded from the dark web, which hosts 6 GB of da­ta which orig­i­nat­ed from TSTT.

The da­ta bun­dle in­cludes scans, a list of names and cre­den­tials.

There are hun­dreds of thou­sands of names on the list which has been post­ed on­line fol­low­ing the da­ta breach at the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny.

As of yes­ter­day, the da­ta has been down­loaded over 15,796 times.

The da­ta has names, home ad­dress­es, email ad­dress­es, cell phone num­bers, birth cer­tifi­cates, pass­port num­bers, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards, re­ceipts, in­ter­nal emails as well as cre­den­tials.

The com­pa­ny’s Line Min­is­ter, Gon­za­les has or­dered an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the da­ta breach.

The min­is­ter said the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion war­rants a thor­ough and full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion to as­cer­tain the facts and cir­cum­stances that caused the breach, TSTT’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions re­gard­ing the mat­ter, and the ac­tions the or­gan­i­sa­tion is (and has been) tak­ing to re­duce the pos­si­bil­i­ty of fu­ture cy­ber in­cur­sions. TSTT de­clined to com­ment on the mat­ter yes­ter­day. The Guardian was un­able to get any pub­lic of­fi­cial to com­ment.

Dig­i­cel’s 2021 breach
wasn’t in T&T

As the da­ta breach un­folds for TSTT, Dig­i­cel’s chief ex­ec­u­tive Abra­ham Smith sought to clear the air on a 2021 cy­ber at­tack on the com­pa­ny.

Yes­ter­day, in­for­ma­tion be­gan to cir­cu­late about the breach. But Smith said it was Dig­i­cel Ja­maica and not Dig­i­cel Trinidad which was af­fect­ed. He said the in­ci­dent was not re­cent.

“Dig­i­cel is aware of a re­cent so­cial me­dia post re­gard­ing a da­ta breach that took place in 2021. I want to as­sure the com­mu­ni­ty that Dig­i­cel Trinidad and To­ba­go was not af­fect­ed and to date has no known da­ta breach­es from the men­tioned threat ac­tor,” he said.

“No or­gan­i­sa­tion is im­mune to cy­ber­at­tacks, and while Dig­i­cel with­stands thou­sands of at­tempt­ed at­tacks dai­ly, the vast ma­jor­i­ty of these are un­suc­cess­ful as our sys­tems are proven to be ro­bust and world-class. How­ev­er, at­tacks like these are on the rise glob­al­ly, and cy­ber crim­i­nals like Ran­somExx con­stant­ly try to find new ways of at­tack­ing and ex­ploit­ing sys­tems.

He said that Dig­i­cel has tak­en a proac­tive ap­proach in its threat pro­tec­tion and mit­i­ga­tion man­age­ment, and while at­tacks can­not be whol­ly pre­vent­ed if a breach does oc­cur, Smith promised full trans­paren­cy in in­form­ing the rel­e­vant par­ties and pro­vid­ing guid­ance on steps to take to help safe­guard per­son­al da­ta.