AT&T Data Breach Investigation: Cybersecurity Concerns in Telecommunications Industry

2024-03-31 01:55:00

AT&T, the New York-based telecommunications giant, has announced an investigation into a data breach affecting more than 70 million customers, both current and former, whose personal information has been exposed on the dark web. According to the statement issued by the company on Saturday, 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former customers are involved in the incident, which took place approximately two weeks ago, without “materially” impacting the operations of the company to date.

The compromised data set includes, depending on the case, social security numbers, full names, email and physical addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, as well as AT&T account numbers and access codes. The company has not yet publicly identified the source of the leak. AT&T has revealed that, based on a preliminary analysis, the data appears to come from 2019 or earlier, and has begun the process of contacting the 7.6 million affected customers to reset their passcodes, offering them identity monitoring services. and free credit.

The company said it has no evidence of unauthorized access to its systems as a result of the incident and that it is not yet known whether the data originated from AT&T or one of its providers.

External cybersecurity experts have been hired to assist in the investigation. In the meantime, affected consumers have been advised to change their passwords, monitor other accounts, and consider freezing their credit due to exposed Social Security numbers. AT&T has been the subject of multiple data breaches in previous years, highlighted by an incident in March 2023 involving 9 million mobile customers and another in August 2021, although the latter is not related to the current breach.

The security of telecommunications customer data in the United States is an ongoing concern, with similar incidents affecting T-Mobile and Verizon recently. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) updated its data breach notification rules last December, seeking to improve the protection of sensitive customer information.

Last February, AT&T apologized to thousands of users affected by a service outage caused by technical problems that affected thousands of people in Atlanta, Los Angeles and New York, and that occurred due to a technical problem while the company was trying to expand its network. .

The problem was concentrated in several cities, including Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami.

Downdetector also indicated that T-Mobile, Verizon and Cricket Wireless users were reporting fewer outages.

However, T-Mobile said in a statement that its network was “operating normally” and that the reports likely “reflected the challenges our customers were having when trying to connect with users on other networks.”

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