American Telecommunications Giant Grapples with Cybersecurity Concerns
AT&T data breach: Personal information of 73 million current and former users leaked online
Personal data of 73 million current or former users of AT&T has leaked online, said the American telecommunications giant, on Saturday (Mar 30) after it recently discovered the data breach.
What we know about the leak
The information leaked includes social security numbers, addresses, and passwords, said AT&T, adding that the dataset was recently found on the “dark web” around two weeks ago. It may also reportedly include users’ full names, email and mailing addresses, phone numbers and birth dates.
The breach has impacted around 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders, according to the American telecom giant.
The company said that it has begun notifying millions of customers about the data theft and has called in cybersecurity experts to investigate. It also said that the passwords of current users have been changed, and the users whose personal data was leaked will be notified as well.
The data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, said AT&T, but it was not immediately known if the data “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors,” said the Dallas-based company, in a statement.
It also urged the customers to “remain vigilant by monitoring account activity and credit reports”. However, AT&T assured that the incident had no material impact on its operations.
The data that appeared on a hacking forum closely resembled that of the reported data breach that surfaced in 2021 which AT&T never acknowledged, said Troy Hunt, a cybersecurity researcher and founder of an Australia-based website ‘Have I Been Pwned?’ which allows users to check if their information has been compromised.
“If they assess this and they made the wrong call on it, and we’ve had a course of years pass without them being able to notify impacted customers,” then it’s likely the company will soon face class action lawsuits, said Hunt, according to the Associated Press.
The company’s wireless 5G network covers around 290 million people across the United States and is one of the largest mobile and internet service providers in the country.
AT&T outage
The news about the data breach comes a month after AT&T customers experienced a widespread outage where more than 70,000 Americans in states like Texas, Florida, California lost cell service. The incident has since prompted federal investigations.
However, the American telecom giant attributed the outage to a technical coding error and assured that it was not a malicious attack.
