AT&T Hacked: AT&T confirms hackers stole records of 109 million US customers in a massive data breach

AT&T revealed on Friday that it had fallen victim to a massive hacking incident. The telecom giant confirmed today that it suffered a significant data breach in April, resulting in the unauthorized download of records from approximately 109 million customer accounts. The stolen data includes records of calls and texts from 2022, marking a substantial breach in consumer communication security.

The telecommunications giant said that the FBI is actively investigating the incident, which resulted in at least one arrest. The breach occurred when AT&T’s call logs were accessed and copied from a third-party cloud platform, marking a major compromise of consumer communication records.

This incident adds to the growing list of major hacks affecting large numbers of Americans. The news comes just a month after the hacker group LockBit claimed to have breached the US Federal Reserve, threatening to release 33TB of sensitive data.

AT&T clarified that the compromised data includes call and text records of nearly all its cellular and landline customers from May to October 2022. However, the data does not contain the content of calls or texts, nor does it include personal information like social security numbers.

While the FBI did not identify any suspects on Friday, the agency said that it has been working closely with AT&T and the Justice Department to bolster investigative efforts and assist with incident response. The Federal Communications Commission also has an ongoing investigation into the breach. Additionally, a small number of customers’ records from January 2, 2023, were compromised.

We have been working “collaboratively through the first and second delay process, all while sharing key threat intelligence to bolster FBI investigative equities and to assist AT&T’s incident-response work,” FBI said.

AT&T first became aware of the breach on April 19 when a hacker claimed to have accessed and copied AT&T call logs. The company’s investigation revealed that hackers had unlawfully exfiltrated files containing customer call and text interactions between April 14 and 25. These records include interactions with telephone numbers and aggregate call duration, and some records even contain cell site identification numbers, Reuters reported.

The company has since closed off the point of access and believes the stolen data is not publicly available.

In a related incident in March, AT&T investigated a data set released on the “dark web,” which appeared to affect approximately 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders. This data set was believed to be from 2019 or earlier.

This breach follows a ransomware attack in February on UnitedHealth, which potentially exposed the private data of about one-third of the U.S. population. The healthcare conglomerate later offered over $3.3 billion in loans to care providers impacted by the cyberattack on its tech unit.

As cybersecurity threats continue to evolve, these incidents underscore the critical need for robust data protection measures to safeguard consumer information.

The data breach at AT&T seems far more severe than initially reported. NBC released a video saying that “hackers stole AT&T phone and text records of nearly all cellular customers.” Check it out below.