AT&T Announces Data Breach Affecting Customer Records

TapTechNews July 12th news, AT&T announced on Friday local time that hackers had invaded a third-party cloud platform and obtained a large amount of customer data, including the phone numbers of cellular network and landline customers, as well as the call and text message records for as long as six months from May 1st, 2022 to October 31st, 2022.

In addition, some of the stolen data also includes a small unspecified number of new records generated by some customers after January 2nd, 2023, and the call records of customers of other carriers that rely on the AT&T network; some of these records contain the base station identification numbers associated with the calls and text messages, which can be used to roughly determine the sending location of the calls or text messages.

AT&T stated that these data do not contain any content or timestamp of any calls or text messages, nor does it have any detailed information such as social security numbers, birth dates or other personal identity information.

AT&T stated that the company became aware of the data breach on April 19th and confirmed that this incident has nothing to do with an earlier security incident that occurred in March.

The company said that they currently do not think these data have been made public and are continuing to work with law enforcement agencies to identify and arrest relevant people. As of the TapTechNews press release, AT&T confirmed that at least one person has been arrested.

Cyber security researchers from the incident response company Mandiant said that the hacker group is mainly located in the US and the motivation of its members is mainly financial interests.