US hacker, 21, details how he breached T-Mobile in WSJ interview

‘Their security is awful,’ John Binns said of T-Mobile as he discussed hacking the personal details of 50 million users.

The 21-year-old American hacker who is taking responsibility for infiltrating T-Mobile’s systems said the wireless company’s weak security helped him access a trove of records with personal details on more than 50 million people, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday. John Binns, who grew up in Virginia in the United States but now lives in Turkey, told the WSJ that he managed to break through T-Mobile’s defences after discovering an unprotected router exposed. Binns has used several online aliases since 2017, and said he had been scanning T-Mobile’s internet addresses for vulnerabilities using a simple tool available to the general public. “Their security is awful,” said Binns, who has been communicating with the WSJ via Telegram messages from an account that discussed details of the hack before they were widely known.