Telecommunications company AT&T announced Saturday that a recent data breach leaked the personal information, including Social Security numbers, of 73 million current and former customers on the dark web, TechCrunch reported.
A company press release explained that the sensitive data was published online approximately two weeks ago.
“While AT&T has made this determination, it is not yet known whether the data in those fields originated from AT&T or one of its vendors. With respect to the balance of the data set, which includes personal information such as social security numbers, the source of the data is still being assessed,” the company stated.
AT&T has launched an investigation into the incident with the support of internal and external cybersecurity experts.
“Based on our preliminary analysis, the data set appears to be from 2019 or earlier, impacting approximately 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and approximately 65.4 million former account holders,” AT&T added.
The telecommunications firm reset passcodes for the millions of affected accounts after TechCrunch informed the company about the leaked data, the news outlet reported. Passcodes are usually four-digit PINs that are used as an added layer of security.
AT&T has not found evidence that the data breach resulted from unauthorized access. Additionally, it does not believe the sensitive leaked information included personal financial data or call history.
“The information varied by customer and account, but may have included full name, email address, mailing address, phone number, social security number, date of birth, AT&T account number and passcode,” it reported.
AT&T noted that it is in communication with impacted customers via email and mail and will offer complimentary identity theft and credit monitoring services. Customers were encouraged to set up fraud alerts through the national credit bureaus.
“As of today,” the company stated Saturday, “this incident has not had a material impact on AT&T’s operations.”
In 2021, a hacker claimed to have stolen 73 million customer records, but AT&T denied the data breach. In March, the allegedly stolen information was published on a cybercrime forum, TechCrunch reported. Some customers have since confirmed that their sensitive data was leaked.
Last year, AT&T acknowledged that information for 9 million customers was hacked by one of its vendors, Fox Business reported. The data leak included Customer Proprietary Network Information, such as names, account numbers, phone numbers, and email addresses.
A company spokesperson stated at the time, “A small percentage of impacted customers also had exposure of rate plan name, past due amount, monthly payment amount, various monthly charges and/or minutes used. The information was several years old.”
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