AT&T Resets Passcodes for 7.6 Million Customers After Data Leak
In a shocking revelation, telecommunications giant AT&T announced on Saturday that it had reset the passcodes of 7.6 million customers after discovering that compromised customer data had been released on the dark web.
“Our internal teams are working with external cybersecurity experts to analyze the situation,” AT&T said in a statement. “To the best of our knowledge, the compromised data appears to be from 2019 or earlier and does not contain personal financial information or call history.”
The company disclosed that the compromised information may have included a person’s full name, email address, mailing address, phone number, Social Security number, date of birth, AT&T account number, and passcode. Additionally, 65.4 million former account holders were also affected by the breach.
AT&T assured customers that it would be reaching out to individuals with compromised sensitive personal information separately and offering complimentary identity theft and credit monitoring services.
The company said it had reset the passcodes for those affected and directed customers to a site with details on how to reset them. It also stated that it was launching a robust investigation supported by internal and external cybersecurity experts.
TechCrunch, which first reported on the passcode reset, revealed that the leaked data contained encrypted passcodes that could potentially be used to access AT&T customer accounts. The report also highlighted that this was the first time AT&T acknowledged that the leaked data belonged to its customers, three years after a hacker claimed the theft of 73 million AT&T customer records.
Despite previous denials of a breach, AT&T did not provide specific details on how the leak occurred or why it went unnoticed for so long. The company stated that it was uncertain whether the leaked data originated from AT&T or one of its vendors and that there was no evidence of unauthorized access to its systems resulting in the theft of the data set.
This incident comes on the heels of a widespread outage experienced by AT&T customers last month, which temporarily disrupted connections for users across the United States. The outage, which affected cities like Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York, prompted around 70,000 reports of disrupted service at its peak, according to Downdetector.com.
In response to the outage, AT&T offered affected customers a $5 credit as a gesture to “make it right.” The company continues to face scrutiny and questions surrounding its cybersecurity measures and response to data breaches.
