The sign from an AT&T retail shop in Manhattan
American Telephone & Telegraph revealed that some 73 million customer names and social security numbers, among other personal data, were released onto the so-called dark web approximately two weeks ago.
The breach impacted both millions of current and former customers of the telecom giant.
The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets: overlay networks that use the Internet but require specific software and configurations. It is used both for legal and illegal purposes and uses a technology called “onion routing,” available from the TOR (The Onion Project) web browser, which protects users from surveillance and tracking.
AT&T is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is the world’s fourth largest telecommunications company by revenue, after China Mobile, Verizon Communications, and Comcast. AT&T is also the largest mobile operator in the United States, leading its closest competitor, Verizon Wireless, by 100 million subscribers.
The company said it does not quite know when the database was released onto the Dark Web in the first place but said it had started to investigate the matter.
“AT&T has launched a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts,” it said in a statement. “Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders.”
The telecom giant added that it does not know “whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors.”
In addition, the company has launched an investigation into the matter, it said.
“Currently, AT&T does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in exfiltration of the data set,” the company said in a statement on its website.
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
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