Repeated denials were empty words. It's time to admit your mistakes.
The American telecommunications giant AT&T on March 30 officially confirmed the fact of data leakage concerning 73 million current and former customers of the company. Information about the leak appeared shortly after the hacker MajorNelson published on BreachForums a database first leaked by the ShinyHunters group back in 2021.
Since then, the company has repeatedly denied that the stolen data belonged to its customers, as, according to the results of an internal audit, AT&T systems were not compromised. However, the database still came from somewhere.
Now the company claims that the leak is real and dates back to 2019. It affects approximately 7.6 million current and approximately 65.4 million former AT&T customers.
The leaked information includes Social security numbers, names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, account numbers, and AT&T passwords. The company is not sure whether this data was obtained from AT&T systems or from a third-party supplier, and still refuses to speculate on this.
The company did not find any evidence of unauthorized access to its systems that would lead to a data leak. However, AT&T actively notifies those affected and offers credit history monitoring services at its own expense. It's a bit late, considering that for the first time this database began to walk on the darknet back in 2021.
AT&T is the largest wireless service provider in the United States by number of subscribers. This incident is not the first case of data leakage in recent years, with which the company was somehow connected.
So, almost exactly a year ago, AT&T officially confirmed the fact of a leak that affected the sensitive data of about 9 million customers. And in 2022, the company challenged claims by prominent security researchers that a stolen database of 23 million Americans was linked to AT&T.
The American telecommunications giant AT&T on March 30 officially confirmed the fact of data leakage concerning 73 million current and former customers of the company. Information about the leak appeared shortly after the hacker MajorNelson published on BreachForums a database first leaked by the ShinyHunters group back in 2021.
Since then, the company has repeatedly denied that the stolen data belonged to its customers, as, according to the results of an internal audit, AT&T systems were not compromised. However, the database still came from somewhere.
Now the company claims that the leak is real and dates back to 2019. It affects approximately 7.6 million current and approximately 65.4 million former AT&T customers.
The leaked information includes Social security numbers, names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, account numbers, and AT&T passwords. The company is not sure whether this data was obtained from AT&T systems or from a third-party supplier, and still refuses to speculate on this.
The company did not find any evidence of unauthorized access to its systems that would lead to a data leak. However, AT&T actively notifies those affected and offers credit history monitoring services at its own expense. It's a bit late, considering that for the first time this database began to walk on the darknet back in 2021.
AT&T is the largest wireless service provider in the United States by number of subscribers. This incident is not the first case of data leakage in recent years, with which the company was somehow connected.
So, almost exactly a year ago, AT&T officially confirmed the fact of a leak that affected the sensitive data of about 9 million customers. And in 2022, the company challenged claims by prominent security researchers that a stolen database of 23 million Americans was linked to AT&T.
