CenterPoint Energy Data Breach Exposes Over 1 Million Texans

CenterPoint Energy, a regulated utility that delivers natural gas and electricity in Texas, Indiana, Ohio, and Minnesota, announced that a data breach exposed the personal information of more than one million Texans. The Texas Attorney General’s Office lists 1,062,060 residents as affected. The compromised data includes customers’ names, addresses, Social Security numbers and driver’s‑license numbers.

A threat actor on a cybercrime forum claimed to have extracted roughly 7.49 million customer records from CenterPoint Energy, offering a 2.5 GB archive for download. The attacker said the data were obtained through an API that lacked Web Application Firewall protection, rate limiting and authentication. CenterPoint Energy has activated its incident response procedures, engaged external cybersecurity, forensic and legal advisors, and is assessing which customers will receive notifications as required by law.