US telecommunications big AT&T says it has began notifying tens of millions of consumers concerning the theft of private knowledge just lately found on-line.
The corporate mentioned Saturday {that a} dataset discovered on the “darkish internet” incorporates info comparable to social safety numbers for about 7.6 million present AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.
AT&T mentioned it had already reset the passcodes of present customers and shall be speaking with account holders whose private info was compromised.
It isn’t identified if the information “originated from AT&T or one in every of its distributors”, the corporate mentioned in a press release.
The compromised knowledge is from 2019 or earlier and doesn’t seem to incorporate monetary info or name historical past, it mentioned.
Along with passcodes and social safety numbers, it could embody electronic mail and mailing addresses, cellphone numbers and start dates.
It’s understood the information surfaced on a hacking discussion board almost two weeks in the past.
An AT&T spokesperson didn’t instantly return a request for remark Saturday.
It isn’t the primary disaster this 12 months for the Dallas-based firm. An outage in February briefly knocked out cell phone service for hundreds of US customers.
AT&T on the time blamed the incident on a technical coding error, not a malicious assault.