If you’re an AT&T customer, it’s time to start checking your credit reports and updating your password. Your AT&T credentials are possibly sitting in a database currently for sale on underground hacking forums.
Your AT&T Info Might Be Up for Grabs—Again
Researchers at Hackread have spotted hackers selling a database of 86 million customer records stolen from an AT&T data breach in 2024. The database was posted on a Russian cybercrime forum on May 15, and again on June 3, after which it started appearing on other forums as well.
The exact number of exposed records is in conflict. Hackread claims 86 million records were stolen, while one post selling the database claims 70 million records. However, it’s the stolen data that is the bigger concern.
Hackread
Hackread analyzed the leaked data and found the following information on sale:
- Full names
- Birthdays
- Phone numbers
- Email addresses
- Physical addresses
- Social Security numbers (43,989,219 in total)
To make matters worse, birthdays and Social Security numbers (SSN) listed in the database were initially encrypted. However, hackers have since managed to decrypt them, and the information is now included as plain text.
In simple words, if you’re an AT&T customer, your name, address, birthday, phone number, and SSN are likely part of the leaked database.
This isn’t the first time AT&T has been breached and its data listed for sale. A previous data breach in July 2024 affected nearly all of its cellular customers, but the company didn’t think the stolen data was available online. Another breach happened in March 2024, which affected customer data from 2019 and earlier, affecting 7.6 million existing and 65.4 million former customers.
This latest database for sale was apparently collected over time from various data breaches. That includes the August 2024 National Public Data breach where a hacker leaked over 3.2 billion SSNs, along with other personal information, online. Unless AT&T officially confirms it, we can’t say which breach the data comes from.
Hackread’s analysis shows that the latest leak is “well-structured, clearly formatted, and straightforwardly divided into three CSV files,” making it very easy to understand what data each field represents. All previously encrypted SSNs have been “carefully decrypted” and mapped in this new database, so unless this database was extracted as is from AT&T, someone has gone to great lengths to combine data from multiple breaches together to prepare this database.
Here’s How to Fight Back Against Data Leaks
The best way to protect yourself going forward is to change your AT&T account password, set up multi-factor authentication if you haven’t already, and actively monitor your credit for any signs of fraud. You can also consider freezing your credit temporarily as a way of protecting your credit if your data was breached.
Related
After My Data Was Breached, Here’s How I Protected My Accounts
The quicker you move, the safer you’ll be following a data breach of any type.
Apart from that, keep your eyes open for any scamming or phishing attempts that hackers might throw your way. The leaked data is highly sensitive; with this much information, it’s easy for hackers and scammers to impersonate you online. This means your friends and colleagues are also at risk.
