U.S. phone giant AT&T confirmed Friday it will begin notifying millions of consumers about a fresh data breach the allowed cybercriminals to steal the phone records of “nearly all” of its customers, a company person told TechCrunch.
In a statement, AT&T said that the stolen data contains phone numbers of both cellular and landline customers, as well as AT&T records of calls and text messages – such as who contacted who by phone or text — during a six-month period between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022.
AT&T said some of the stolen data includes more recent records from January 2, 2023 for a smaller but unspecified number of customers.
The stolen data includes call records of customer with phone service from other cell carries that rely on AT&T’s network, the company said.
AT&T said the stolen data “does not contain the content of calls or texts,” but does include calling and texting records that an AT&T phone number interact with during the six-month period, as wells as the total count of a customer’s calls and texts, and call durations — information that does not include the time or date of calls and tests, AT&T said.
ABC News reported AT&T has announced that the company believes a hacker stole records of calls and texts from nearly all of AT&T’s wireless customers, according to a financial filing from the company.
“The data does not contain the content of calls or texts, personal information such as Social Security numbers, dates of birth, or other personally identifiable information,” AT&T said in their statement released early Friday morning. “These records identify the telephone numbers with which an AT&T or MVNO wireless number interacted during these periods, including telephone numbers of AT&T wireline customers and customers of other carriers, counts of those interactions, and aggregate call duration fora day or month.”
AT&T says it has taken “additional cybersecurity measures” in repos to this incident including closing of the point of unlawful access.
CNN reported the call and text message records from mid-to-late 2022 of tens of millions of AT&T cellphone customers and many non-AT&T customers were exposed in a massive data breach, the telecom company revealed Friday.
AT&T said the compromised data includes the telephone numbers of “nearly all” of its cellular customs and the customers of wireless providers that use it’s network between May 1, and October 31, 2022.
“We have an ongoing investigation into the AT&T breach and we’re coordinating with our law enforcement partners,” the FCC said on social media platform X.
AT&T spokesperson Alex Byers told CNN that it was an entirely new incident that had “no connection in any way” to another incident disclosed in March. At that time, AT&T said personal information such as Social Security numbers on 73 million current and former customers was released onto the dark web.
In my opinion, it is good that AT&T scrambled to stop the hacker from gaining even more data. It is unfortunate that happened, and I expect the hacker to face some kind of legal charges eventually.