AT&T Resets Millions of Passcodes
According to AT&T, it has started informing millions of customers about the latest internet discovery of personal data theft.
The massive telecom operator revealed on Saturday that data, including Social Security numbers, was discovered on the “dark web” and pertains to about 7.6 million active AT&T customers as well as 65.4 million past customers.
According to the firm, existing customers’ passcodes have already been changed, and account holders whose sensitive personal information was exposed will be contacted.
The business stated in a statement that it is unknown if the information “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors.” It stated that no money or phone history seems to be included in the hacked data, which is from 2019 or before. It could also contain phone numbers, birth dates, email and mailing addresses, passcodes, and Social Security numbers.
According to cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt, the data, although having leaked on a hacker site about two weeks ago, is very comparable to a previous data breach that occurred in 2021 but was never reported by AT&T.
According to Hunt, the creator of an Australian website that alerts users when their personal information is compromised, “if they assess this and they made the wrong call on it, and we’ve had a course of years pass without them being able to notify impacted customers,” then it’s likely that the company will soon be facing class action lawsuits.
A request for comment on Saturday was not immediately answered by an AT&T representative.
For the Dallas-based corporation, this is hardly the first catastrophe of the year. Thousands of Americans lost their mobile service for a brief period in February due to an outage. AT&T first claimed that a technical coding issue, not a hostile attack, was to blame for the event.