AT&T announced on Friday that “nearly all” of its customers experienced a data breach in 2022 due to one or more hackers. The telecom company revealed that call and text records from May to October 2022 were illegally obtained. AT&T discovered the issue in April and has collaborated with cybersecurity experts to assess the criminal activity’s extent. The company emphasized that only telephone numbers and cell site IDs were compromised, not more sensitive information such as text contents, Social Security numbers, or birth dates. However, AT&T did not rule out the possibility that hackers could uncover customer names.
“We are cooperating with law enforcement to apprehend those responsible,” AT&T stated on Friday. “At least one individual has been detained.”
AT&T highlighted that the breach occurred at a third-party cloud provider and not within their in-house servers. Hackers accessed the data through AT&T’s workspace on a separate cloud platform, reported to be Snowflake by Bloomberg.
“This incident has not had a material impact on AT&T’s operations, and AT&T does not believe that it will materially affect the company’s financial condition or operational results,” AT&T stated in an SEC filing.
Key details include:
– AT&T had 242 million wireless customers in the U.S. as of 2023, according to Statista.
– Hackers accessed 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 fell by 1.14% following the news of the breach.