The massive data breach affects nearly all AT&T customers
A breach on a third-party cloud platform released the call and text records of almost all AT&T customers, the service provider confirmed on Friday.
A spokesperson for AT&T said that the data was released as part of an attack three months ago on data-cloud provider Snowflake. The attack also released customer data from Ticketmaster and a number of other companies. Snowflake was compromised when login data were obtained using malware.
“In April, AT&T learned that customer data was illegally downloaded from our workspace on a third-party cloud platform,” AT&T said in a statement.
The statement details the precise nature of the information that was obtained. It’s believed that the content of calls and text messages is not part of the data breach.
“The call and text records identify the phone numbers with which an AT&T number interacted during this period, including AT&T landline (home phone) customers. It also included counts of those calls or texts and total call durations for specific days or months.”
“Based on our investigation, the compromised data includes files containing AT&T records of calls and texts of nearly all of AT&T’s cellular customers, customers of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) using AT&T’s wireless network, as well as AT&T’s landline customers who interacted with those cellular numbers between May 1, 2022 – October 31, 2022. The compromised data also includes records from January 2, 2023, for a very small number of customers.”
Although the breach does not include data that could be used to identify individual customers associated with the records, AT&T cautions that “there are often ways, using publicly available tools, to find the name associated with a specific phone number.”
An announcement of the breach was delayed, in agreement with the FBI, which has now apprehended at least one person associated with the breach.
The company claims that the stolen information has not been made publicly available yet.
This new breach is apparently unrelated to another leak in which the data of nearly 75 million current and former AT&T customers was leaked.
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