AT&T Customers Had Data Targeted in Security Breach

The knowledge of almost all clients of the telecommunications large AT&T was downloaded to a third-party platform in a 2022 safety breach, the corporate mentioned Friday, in a yr already rife with huge cyberattacks.

The breach hit clients of AT&T’s mobile clients, clients of cell digital community operators utilizing AT&T’s wi-fi community, in addition to its landline clients interacted with these mobile numbers.

An organization investigation decided that compromised knowledge contains information containing AT&T data of calls and texts between May 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2022.

AT&T has greater than 100 million clients within the U.S. and virtually 2.5 million enterprise accounts.

The firm mentioned Friday that it has launched an investigation and engaged with cybersecurity specialists to grasp the character and scope of the prison exercise.

“The knowledge doesn’t include the content material of calls or texts, private data resembling Social Security numbers, dates of beginning, or different personally identifiable data,” AT&T mentioned Friday.

The compromised knowledge additionally doesn’t embrace some data usually seen in utilization particulars, such because the time stamp of calls or texts, the corporate mentioned. The knowledge doesn’t embrace buyer names, however the AT&T mentioned that there are sometimes methods, utilizing publicly out there on-line instruments, to search out the identify related to a selected phone quantity.

AT&T mentioned that it at present doesn’t consider that the information is publicly out there.

The compromised knowledge additionally contains data from Jan. 2, 2023, for a really small variety of clients. The data determine the phone numbers an AT&T or MVNO mobile quantity interacted with throughout these intervals. For a subset of data, a number of cell web site identification quantity(s) related to the interactions are additionally included.

The firm continues to cooperate with regulation enforcement on the incident and that it understands that a minimum of one particular person has been apprehended to date.

The yr has already been marked by a number of main knowledge breaches, together with an earlier assault on AT&T. In March AT&T mentioned {that a} dataset discovered on the “darkish internet” contained data resembling Social Security numbers for about 7.6 million present AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.

AT&T mentioned on the time that it had already reset the passcodes of present customers and could be speaking with account holders whose delicate private data was compromised.

There’s additionally been main disruptions at automobile dealerships in North America after software program supplier CDK Global confronted back-to-back cyberattacks. And Alabama’s schooling superintendent mentioned earlier this month that some knowledge was “breached” throughout a hacking try on the Alabama State Department of Education.

Shares of AT&T Inc., primarily based in Dallas, fell greater than 2% earlier than the markets opened on Friday.