AT&T confirms 9m wireless accounts exposed by third part • The Register

AT&T has confirmed that miscreants had entry to 9 million of its wi-fi prospects’ account particulars after one in every of its vendor’s networks suffered a safety failure in January.

The telecommunications large informed us that these customers’ buyer proprietary community data accessed — however stated the information stated was “a number of years outdated,” and “principally referring to machine improve eligibility.”

In accordance with AT&T, its methods weren’t compromised. In an announcement to The Register right this moment, an AT&T spokesperson stated:

In accordance with the notification letter despatched to prospects and shared with The Register, AT&T confirmed that the seller has since addressed no matter safety shortcoming led to the above. The missive additionally says AT&T “notified federal regulation enforcement in regards to the unauthorized entry.”

The US provider additionally beneficial prospects add “extra security” password safety to compromised accounts, which comes at no cost.

AT&T declined to determine the seller. Whereas The Register has completely no proof the 2 are associated, we are going to word that e mail advertising agency Mailchimp was also breached in January and stated intruders gained entry to greater than 100 buyer accounts.

In a seemingly comparable incident final summer time, Hold Security said it had found stolen knowledge on the market that included names, Social Safety numbers, dates of beginning, e mail and bodily addresses, and telephone numbers belonging to about 23 million People that, “probably belongs to AT&T prospects.”

Whereas we’re not even a full three months into 2023, the yr is already off to a rocky begin for telecommunications firms and their knowledge safety efforts.

Final month Canadian communications large Telus told The Register that it’s investigating whether or not crooks have stolen worker knowledge and its supply code, all of which is being provided on the market on a felony discussion board.

And in January one other provider, T-Cellular US, admitted a data breach during which somebody abused an API to obtain private data belonging to 37 million subscribers. This was the community operator’s sixth safety snafu in 5 years. ®