AT&T, one of the largest telecom companies in the US, has confirmed a massive data breach impacting over 73 million of their current and former customers.
For over a year, people have been finding their personal info dumped online – names, addresses, even socials. Turns out, all that data traces back to America’s second largest wireless carrier.
But every time hackers flashed the leaked files, AT&T denied it had anything to do with them! That is, until a few days ago when they finally fessed up.
So What Really Happened in the AT&T Data Breach
Back in 2021, a hacker group called Shiny Hunters claimed to have stolen sensitive personal info like names, addresses, phone numbers, and even social security numbers from 73 million AT&T accounts. At the time, AT&T denied any breach occurred.
Hackers Posted Data on Forums
Source: BleepingComputer
Fast forward to earlier this year, when another hacker leaked the huge dataset on a forum, again claiming it was the same AT&T data stolen previously.
Security researchers analyzed it and found it did indeed contain very sensitive info, but AT&T still denied it was their data.
However, that’s where things got really interesting.
Researchers spoke to over 50 AT&T customers who said the leaked data contained email addresses and details they had only ever used for their AT&T account. Things were pointing to this very likely being a real AT&T data breach.
There was no other explanation – it had to have come from the telco’s broken security.
The real kicker? On top of everything else, hackers also made off with the passcodes of over 7 MILLION accounts. No wonder AT&T was so hesitant to own up.
The company stayed silent on the AT&T Data Breach. Until just a few days ago, when they finally admitted that the data is in fact from 73 million of their current and former customers from as far back as 2019.
They also confirmed the account passcodes for over 7 million customers had been compromised too.
Now AT&T says they’ve reset those passcodes and will be notifying all 73 million affected individuals.
But what took them so long to admit this? And how did such a massive amount of sensitive customer data get stolen in the first place?
With over half the US population entangled in this mess, you’ve got to be extra careful.
It’s situations like these that show how important data security and privacy really are. Major breaches will only continue to happen if companies don’t take protecting our information seriously.
