US phone maker, AT&T announces data breach in hacker’s attack

One of America’s biggest phone operators, AT&T has revealed that hackers compromised data including texts and calls of a vast majority of its customers during an attack.

The compromised data comprises AT&T’s disclosure to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): call and text message records for nearly all its cellular customers, call and text message records for customers of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that utilize the network.

Call and text message records for AT&T landline customers who interacted with the aforementioned cellular numbers between May 1, 2022, and October 31, 2022, were also compromised.

While customer names were not directly exposed, AT&T admits that it may be possible to identify people connected to particular phone numbers using publicly accessible internet resources, according to a report published by USA Today.

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The company said in a statement that call logs from consumers having phone service from other cell carriers that depend on AT&T’s network are also included in the stolen data.

The company said: “The stolen data, does not contain the content of calls or texts. But it does contain metadata, or the total number of calls and texts a customer made and the length of each call.

“It also includes the calling and texting records that a customer with an AT&T phone number interacted with during the six months.

“While the data does not include customer names, there are often ways, using publicly available online tools, to find the name associated with a specific telephone number. “

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