Charter Communications Data Breach Could Impact Nearly 5 Million

The notorious ShinyHunters extortion group has published data allegedly stolen from the telecoms services provider Charter Communications. ShinyHunters is known for engaging in voice phishing attacks to gain access to victim organizations’ networks and rapidly exfiltrate data that it then threatens to leak online unless a ransom is paid. The group lists its victims on a Tor-based leak site, and the data it claims to have been stolen from Charter was made available for download on that portal on Thursday, which suggests that the company did not pay a ransom to prevent its publication. According to ShinyHunters’ post, the stolen data includes over 42 million customer records, along with customer proprietary network information (CPNI). The number of potentially affected individuals, however, appears to be only 4.9 million, data breach notification website HaveIBeenPwned says. Its analysis of the data revealed 4.9 million unique email addresses, along with names, addresses, and phone numbers. The data contains 85,000 records associated with employee accounts, each of which includes a job title. Over the past year, ShinyHunters has claimed numerous high-profile data breaches, mainly involving Salesforce customers. Some of these include Canvas, CarGurus, Carnival, Panera Bread, 7-Eleven, and Grafana. One of the largest broadband providers in the US, Charter has over 30 million residential and business customers. “We are aware of the situation, following our security protocols, and are working with appropriate authorities. Only sales tools used to manage current, past, and prospective business customers were impacted; no CPNI or sensitive PI was released by the threat actor,” a Charter spokesperson said, responding to a SecurityWeek inquiry.  Related: Oncology Institute Discloses Data Breach Related: 266,000 Affected by Data Breach at Radiology Associates of Richmond Related: DocketWise Data Breach Impacts 143,000 Related:American Lending Center Data Breach Affects 123,000 Individuals WRITTEN BY Ionut Arghire Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek. More from Ionut Arghire Critical FortiClient EMS Vulnerability Exploited in Fresh Attacks Gitea Vulnerability Exposed 30,000 Deployments to Attacks Google Unveils AI Threat Defense Platform to Fight AI-Powered Cyberattacks RevEng.AI Raises $15 Million to Hunt for Flaws and Backdoors in Software Binaries GlassWorm Botnet Disrupted FBI: Hackers Sending Operatives in Person to Insert USB Drives and Steal Data CISA Urges Immediate Patching of Exploited LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin Zero-Day Iranian APT Targets Aviation, Software Companies With Updated Tools Latest News MokN Raises $15 Million for Phish-Back Platform Gogs Zero-Day Exposes Servers to Remote Code Execution California Sues 23andMe, Alleging It Failed to Protect User Data in 2023 Breach Chrome 148 Update Patches 151 Vulnerabilities Russia-Linked ‘GreyVibe’ Attackers Use AI to Supercharge Cyberattacks Geordie Raises $30 Million for AI Security and Governance Platform Carnival Data Breach Exposed 6 Million People New BTMOB Android Malware Enables Full Device Takeover Trending Virtual Event: Threat Detection And Incident Response Summit On-Demand Delve into big-picture strategies to reduce attack surfaces, improve patch management, conduct post-incident forensics, and tools and tricks needed in a modern organization. Register Webinar: Third-Party Risk In Practice June 4, 2026 Organizations are investing heavily in third-party risk management, but breaches, delays, and blind spots continue to persist. Join this live webinar as we examine the gap between how organizations think their third-party risk programs are performing and what’s actually happening in practice. Register People on the Move Anurag Jain has been appointed Senior Vice President of Engineering at CodeHunter CTERA has appointed Tal Sarfaty as Senior Vice President of Cybersecurity. Quantum Secure Encryption has named Michael Massing as Chief Technology Officer. More People On The Move Expert Insights Raising The Cybersecurity Stakes: Ante Up For The Agentic Era CISOs are now facing machine-speed attacks and asking, “How do I agent?” The industry must provide remediation at scale. (Nadir Izrael) Caught Off Guard: Securing AI After It Hits Production As enterprises rush AI projects into production, security teams are increasingly being forced into reactive mode. (Joshua Goldfarb) Cyber Resilience Is The New Business Continuity Plan The organizations best prepared to face disruption are those that align security, continuity and risk management around what the business cannot afford to lose. (Steve Durbin) Enhancing Data Center Security Without Sacrificing Performance For AI data centers, where the stakes are the highest and performance constraints are the tightest, security and performance are no longer a zero-sum game. (Nadir Izrael) Is The SOC Obsolete, And We Just Haven’t Admitted It Yet? Many AI-first enterprises have already embraced sovereign architectures for general AI initiatives; cybersecurity—and the SOC—should be next. (Danelle Au) Flipboard Reddit Whatsapp Email