In a press release, the carrier said “user data was leaked to the dark web approximately two weeks ago,” containing a variety of personal information including names, home addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and social security numbers.
“ We are unable to determine whether the source of the breach was AT&T’s systems or our suppliers,” the telecom company said. “ We have found no evidence of unauthorized access to our internal systems that could have led to the breach.”
AT&T has not yet determined the source of the leak of personal information of more than 70 million customer accounts.
The data dates back to 2019 or earlier. AT&T said the breach did not contain customer financial information or call history. Specifically, 7.6 million current accounts and 65.7 million old accounts were affected.
The carrier said it has contacted affected customers with instructions on how to reset their passwords, and urged users to be alert for suspicious account changes or credit reports.
The first news about the leak was posted by a Twitter account named vx-underground on March 17.
At the time, AT&T said there was “ no indication that our systems were compromised. The files on the forum do not appear to have come from the company.”
In February, AT&T experienced an hours-long outage of its cell phone service. The carrier said it was due to a system failure, not a cyberattack. CEO John Stankey later apologized to customers for the outage and “compensated” each account with $5.
Massive outages like AT&T’s are not common in the U.S. In 2021, T-Mobile paid about $19.5 million to settle an FCC investigation after a 12-hour, 13-minute outage in June 2020.
It resulted in congestion on T-Mobile’s 2G, 3G, and 4G networks, causing more than 23,000 calls to 911 to go through. Additionally, the carrier must implement a compliance plan with new commitments to improve 911 notifications and provide status updates within two hours of initial notification.
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