Data Belonging To 110m AT&T Customers Stolen
The leading US telecommunications company AT&T has confirmed that an unknown hacker has stolen the records of calls and texts from nearly all of 110 million wireless customers.
The breach, which was announced by the company on Friday 12th July, took place over a period of five months in 2022.
The customers data was downloaded to a third-party platform in a security breach, and it can be expected to be followed by a wave of cyber attacks against those businesses and organisation who have had their supposedly secure data stolen
Wireless Customers Hacked
The breach affects AT&T’s mobile customers, the customers of mobile virtual network operators using AT&T’s wireless network, as well as its landline customers who interacted with those cellular numbers. The compromised data does not include some of the information typically seen in usage details, such as the time stamp of calls or texts or customer names. However, there are often ways using publicly available online tools to find the name associated with a specific telephone number.
An internal investigation determined that compromised data includes AT&T records of calls and texts between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022. It is understood that the compromised data also includes records from January 2, 2023. These records identify the telephone numbers an AT&T or MVNO mobile number interacted with during these periods. For a subset of records, one or more cell site identification numbers associated with the interactions are also included.
AT&T identified the third-party platform as the cloud data storage company, Snowflake and that the incident was limited to an AT&T workspace on that cloud company’s platform and did not affect its network.
AT&T’s investigation is continuing and it has engaged with cyber security experts to understand the nature and scope of the criminal breach. The FBI are involved on the investigation and at least one person has been arrested. The FBI said that it has worked collaboratively with AT&T and the US Department of Justice “through the first and second delay process, all while sharing key threat intelligence to bolster FBI investigative equities and to assist AT&T’s incident response work.”
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) said in a statement they are aware of the incident, and are working with AT&T and other government agencies to assess the impact of the breach.
"As always, CISA urges all organisations to enforce stringent security measures, including multifactor authentication. We will continue to monitor and provide guidance or assistance, as needed," the statement said.
AT&T | CISA | Al Jazeera | ABC News | Financial Times | Reuters | Security Week |
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