AT&T announced on Friday that nearly all its customers experienced data breaches in 2022 due to hacker activity. The telecom company reported that hackers illegally accessed call and text records between May and October 2022. AT&T discovered the breach in April and has since collaborated with cybersecurity experts to investigate the criminal activity.
The compromised data involved telephone numbers and cell site IDs, but did not include more sensitive information like text contents, Social Security numbers, or birth dates. Nonetheless, AT&T cautioned that hackers might still link this information to customer identities.
“We are cooperating with law enforcement to apprehend those responsible for the breach,” AT&T stated. The company noted that at least one individual has been arrested in connection with the incident.
AT&T clarified that the breach resulted from a compromise of a third-party cloud provider, not its in-house servers. Hackers accessed the data through AT&T’s workspace on a separate cloud platform, which Bloomberg identified as Snowflake.
According to an SEC filing, AT&T stated, “[T]his incident has not had a material impact on AT&T’s operations, and AT&T does not believe that this incident is reasonably likely to materially impact AT&T’s financial condition or results of operations.”
Key figures:
– AT&T had 242 million wireless customers in the U.S. as of 2023, based on data from Statista.
– Hackers had access to almost all AT&T customer call logs for six months in 2022.
– AT&T reported $30 billion in revenues for the first quarter of 2024.
– AT&T’s stock price dropped by 1.14% following the announcement of the hack.