AT&T revealed that it suffered a major hack of its databases. Phone call data, as well as text messages, during the period of May through October 2022 has been exposed onto the dark web. This could be worse than typical hacks of information as it reveals deeply personal information.
AT&T is of course affected in addition to mobile virtual network operators, cheaper operators that rely on AT&T’s network. Fox News reports:
In a startling revelation, AT&T announced that it had suffered a significant data breach affecting “nearly all” of its cellular customers, as well as customers of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) using AT&T’s wireless network and some landline customers.
The data that was taken was from May 1 through Oct. 31, 2022, with a small number of additional records from Jan. 2, 2023, which has raised serious concerns about customer privacy and data security.
Cellphones collect tremendous amounts of data, including location for calls based on cell towers. Police have used location data from phones in the past to identify protesters and criminals, including during the January 6 2021 protest. The Hacker News continues:
A subset of these records also contained one or more cell site identification numbers, potentially allowing the threat actors to triangulate the approximate location of a customer when a call was made or a text message was sent. AT&T said it will alert current and former customers if their information was involved.
“The threat actors have used data from previous compromises to map phone numbers to identities,” Jake Williams, former NSA hacker and faculty at IANS Research, said. “What the threat actors stole here are effectively call data records (CDR), which are a gold mine in intelligence analysis because they can be used to understand who is talking to who — and when.”
Important to note is that encrypted messages, such as iPhone’s iMessage, WhatsApp, or Signal, are not captured by phone providers and are therefore not included in the hack. Calls over FaceTime, Skype, or other video or audio calls over internet, are also encrypted.
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