AT&T said Friday that a cyberattack had compromised the data of “almost all” of its mobile phone customers and downloaded it to a third-party cloud platform.
Telecommunications giant AT&T has “taken steps” to shut down illegal access points and is working with law enforcement to track down the hackers, with at least one arrest already made, AT&T said in a statement.
“At this time, we believe that the data is not publicly available,” AT&T said in a statement.
The stolen data included call records and text messages from mobile customers, wireless network customers and landline customers interacting with mobile customers between May 2022 and October 2022. The stolen data also included a small number of customer records from January 2, 2023.
The company said the stolen data did not include the contents of users’ calls or text messages, and that the hackers did not steal personal information such as Social Security numbers or dates of birth.
The stolen data also does not include timestamps, which means that the hackers can see which users have interacted and how many times, but not when.
The telecommunications company said it first learned about the data breach in April.
What can hackers do with stolen data?
Hackers often use stolen data like Social Security numbers, banking information and dates of birth to commit identity theft and fraud, but AT&T says no personal information was included in the data breach.
The incident is likely to be of greater concern to AT&T as it sees future data breaches as a more likely scenario, as hackers sometimes use them as an extortion ploy to force companies to pay ransoms for stolen data.
