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Saturday, July 26, 2025

CWU ‘disappointed’ report into TSTT cyberattack not public yet

by

Carisa Lee
445 days ago
20240507
FILE: CWU general secretary Joanne Ogeer, centre, addresses journalists at a media conference at CWU Hall,  Port-of-Spain.

FILE: CWU general secretary Joanne Ogeer, centre, addresses journalists at a media conference at CWU Hall, Port-of-Spain.

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers Union says it is “dis­ap­point­ed” that the re­port in­to last year’s cy­ber­at­tack on TSTT has not yet been re­leased. The union al­so ac­cus­es the com­pa­ny of pro­long­ing the probe.

Yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Mar­vin Gon­za­les said he had not yet re­ceived the re­port from the in­de­pen­dent en­quiry in­to the cy­ber­at­tack on TSTT. He added that he could not even say when the re­port would be made avail­able to him.

“Not at this time. As soon as it is re­ceived, I will let the pub­lic know,” Gon­za­les said.

The cy­ber­at­tack on Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go oc­curred on Oc­to­ber 9 last year at 4.18 pm.

How­ev­er, the in­ci­dent was on­ly made pub­lic on Oc­to­ber 27, af­ter Fal­con Feeds, an In­dia-based tech­nol­o­gy se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, re­port­ed on its X (Twit­ter) so­cial me­dia ac­count that ran­somware group, Ran­somExx, had added TSTT (http://tstt.co.tt) to its vic­tim’s list. It claimed to have ac­cess to 6GB of da­ta.

At first, TSTT said there was no com­pro­mise of cus­tomer da­ta but af­ter cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts went dig­ging in­to the da­ta and made their dis­cov­er­ies pub­lic, the com­pa­ny is­sued an­oth­er state­ment say­ing 6GB, or less than one per cent of the petabytes of the com­pa­ny’s da­ta, was ac­cessed. But it said then that the ma­jor­i­ty of its cus­tomers’ da­ta was not com­pro­mised.

In a press re­lease yes­ter­day, the CWU said it was dis­ap­point­ed with TSTT, ac­cus­ing the com­pa­ny of pro­long­ing the probe. The union asked TSTT when the re­port from the ex­ter­nal probe will be made pub­lic and what it costs tax­pay­ers.

“It is the be­lief of the union that the Gov­ern­ment has once again failed TSTT’s em­ploy­ees, the cus­tomers, and the coun­try at large with an­oth­er de­layed re­port,” the re­lease said.

The recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union head­ed by pres­i­dent Claire-Anne Leach-Lewis and sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer al­so asked Gon­za­les if he ever re­spond­ed to for­mer TSTT CEO Lisa Agard’s Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) com­ments pri­vate­ly.

“Tell the pub­lic what were the con­tents of the state­ments of Oc­to­ber 31, 2023 and No­vem­ber 9, 2023 and who pre­pared same, con­firmed same, and was tasked with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure it was ac­cu­rate to de­liv­er it to the min­is­ter in the Par­lia­ment which ac­tu­al­ly mis­led the coun­try,” the union added.

In Feb­ru­ary, Agard told a JSC that she in no way mis­led the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter on the sever­i­ty of the Oc­to­ber 2023 cy­ber­at­tack.

Agard told the JSC that in her sub­mis­sion to the min­is­ter, she nev­er said da­ta was not com­pro­mised.


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