Antonio Hernández
AT&T, the telecommunications giant, made a significant announcement on Saturday, revealing that it had initiated a reset of passcodes for 7.6 million customers. This action was taken following the discovery of compromised customer data circulating on the dark web.
“Our internal teams are collaborating with external cybersecurity experts to thoroughly assess the situation,” said AT&T. According to AT&T, the compromised data, believed to date back to 2019 or earlier, does not include personal financial information or call history.
“Details of the compromised information varied by customer and account but may have included full names, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, AT&T account numbers, and passcodes,” the company stated. Furthermore, the breach impacted an additional 65.4 million former account holders.
To address the situation, AT&T has initiated the reset of passcodes for affected customers and has provided instructions on how to reset them via a dedicated website. Additionally, the company has pledged to contact individuals separately if their sensitive personal information is compromised, offering complimentary identity theft and credit monitoring services.
“In response to this incident, AT&T has launched a thorough investigation supported by both internal and external cybersecurity experts,” said AT&T. Notably, this acknowledgment marks the first time AT&T has confirmed that leaked data pertains to its customers, following a three-year period since a hacker claimed the theft of 73 million AT&T customer records.
“Previously, AT&T denied any breach of its systems, though the specifics of how the leak occurred remain unclear,” the company stated. The company stated it is uncertain whether the leaked data originated from AT&T or one of its vendors and has no evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in the theft of the data set.
“This development follows a widespread outage experienced by AT&T customers last month, disrupting connections across the United States for several hours on February 22nd,” AT&T noted. At its peak, approximately 70,000 reports of disrupted service were logged for the wireless carrier, impacting users in cities such as Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York.
In response to the outage, AT&T offered affected customers a $5 credit as a gesture to “make it right,” AT&T said.
