Seekurity CEO Apologizes to Vodafone over Data Leakage

Mohamed Abdel Basset, founder of Seekurity for information security solutions published an apology to Vodafone about concerning a post he published on his personal account about a person alleging leaking Vodafone Egypt customer data.

Basset then deleted the post from his account, explaining that he did not intend to defame the company or its reputation but, he rather shared the news almost verbatim from one of the popular forums famous for leaking data.

Abdel Basset said, in an apology that he posted on his account, “I hastened to publish news about the subject of the alleged leakage of its customers' data, and this is out of my concern for the company's interest as it is a company operating inside Egypt, and I always inform the data authorities about any problem that occurs."

"I had previously contacted more than one party in Egypt and helped them protect their data by communicating with them directly or by asking the public to take preventive measure against these security problems," he added, noting that the situation regarding the alleged leak of Vodafone Egypt is different, because the data allegedly leaked was already publicly present, and it was necessary to intervene quickly to solve it.

Abdel Basset listed the details of what was published on the forum of data leaks, and wrote: “There is a person who wanted to buy the data offered for sale for $300, provided that payment is made in two stages, $150 before obtaining the data and the other half after obtaining it."

He continued: "After the first payment was made, the person called Cyber_Anony disappeared, for unknown reasons, and did not respond to the person who wanted to buy the "alleged leak", and thus the buyer informed the forum management, which made a "claim" that this seller was a "fraud" and it gave him 24 hours to defend himself, or to complete the data sale process so that he was not completely banned from the forum."

Abdel Basit confirmed that he did not intend to offend and defame Vodafone, and mentioned the fact of his visit to Vodafone Egypt headquarters in the Smart Village in 2014 to inform them personally about some serious security vulnerabilities, which they welcomed, and all the security weaknesses were resolved without any problems.

Seekurity CEO concluded the post, "Any person, regardless of his experience, is likely to make mistakes unintentionally, because the purpose and the goal is basically to help and not defame ... and I repeat my apologies again."

Abdel Basset also apologized for the Ministry of Finance as the news platform alleged that the buyer wanted to gain access to data related to the ministry.