A data breach at US utility CenterPoint Energy affected 1,062,060 people in Texas, according to a notice the company filed with the Texas Attorney General’s Office this week, SecurityWeek reported on Thursday, 15 October 2026.
The stolen information includes names, addresses, Social Security numbers and driver’s licence numbers, according to the company’s filing as reported by SecurityWeek.
What has been disclosed
The Texas filing came about a month after CenterPoint first told the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that customer information had been stolen from its systems, SecurityWeek reported.
In that SEC filing, quoted by SecurityWeek in September, the company said: “While the investigation remains ongoing, the Company has determined that an unauthorized third party obtained personal information relating to a portion of the Company’s customers through one of the Company’s external facing systems.”
CenterPoint said it learned of the breach after the attacker posted about it publicly, according to SecurityWeek. It said only a portion of its customers had been affected and that the incident had not affected its operations. In September, SecurityWeek reported that the company said the incident had not affected the delivery of electricity and gas, and that it did not expect the breach to have a material impact.
According to SecurityWeek, CenterPoint appears not yet to have sent notification letters to the people affected.
The hacker’s claims
The attacker’s own figures are much larger, and they have not been verified.
A few days before CenterPoint’s first disclosure, a hacker claimed on a known cybercrime forum to have obtained “nearly 7.5 million user records” from the company, SecurityWeek reported. On 12 September, the hacker made a 2.5-gigabyte archive available for download that allegedly contains data taken from the utility. SecurityWeek said the file seemingly contains about 3 million phone numbers along with other personal information.
SecurityWeek said in September that it could not confirm the validity of the data, and noted that it is “not uncommon for hackers to make false or exaggerated claims.” It also reported that the hacker threatened that “next time we won’t simply pull data, we’ll start attacking the main infrastructure.”
The 7.5 million figure and the Texas figure measure different things. The 1,062,060 count covers Texas residents only, while the hacker’s claim refers to records in general, so they cannot be compared directly.
Other states
CenterPoint is based in Houston and, according to SecurityWeek, delivers electricity and natural gas to about 7 million customers across Indiana, Minnesota, Ohio and Texas. SecurityWeek said residents of the other three states may also have been affected, but the total impact “remains unclear.” It said it had asked CenterPoint how many people were affected in total.
Not the first claim
SecurityWeek reported in September that this is not the first time hackers have claimed to hold CenterPoint data. In 2024, the company was one of several energy firms targeted by an access broker, and later another hacker claimed to have its data. In both cases, according to SecurityWeek, the data was believed to have come from the Cl0p ransomware group’s 2023 MOVEit campaign, through a third party rather than directly from CenterPoint’s systems.
What we don’t know
We don’t yet know how many customers outside Texas were affected, who the attacker is, or whether the hacker’s archive is genuine. CenterPoint has not publicly given a total.
What this means
- Over a million Texans affected. That’s the company’s own count in its filing with the state, as reported by SecurityWeek.
- Sensitive data exposed. The stolen data includes Social Security and driver’s licence numbers, per the filing.
- The full scale is unclear. The hacker claims 7.5 million records; that figure is unverified.
Sources
- SecurityWeek, “CenterPoint Energy Data Breach Impacts 1 Million Texans”, Ionut Arghire, 15 October 2026. https://www.securityweek.com/centerpoint-energy-data-breach-impacts-1-million-texans/
- SecurityWeek, “Texas Utility CenterPoint Energy Confirms Breach After Hacker Leaks Data”, Eduard Kovacs, 15 September 2026. https://www.securityweek.com/texas-utility-centerpoint-energy-confirms-breach-after-hacker-leaks-data/
Related stories
- Ampath Confirms a Cybersecurity Incident; Attacker Claims It Stole More Than 80 Million Patient Records
- UK Legal Aid Agency Says Data Stolen in Its 2025 Cyber-Attack Goes Back as Far as 1978
- South Korea’s Financial Hacks Spread to 16 Firms, Including the Operator of Crypto Exchange Gopax; About 100,000 Records Presumed Leaked
