AT&T notifies users of data breach and resets millions of passcodes
Newsy
The company said in a statement that it is not known if the data "originated from AT&T or one of its vendors."
AT&T said it has begun notifying millions of customers about the theft of personal data recently discovered online.
The telecommunications giant said Saturday that a dataset found on the "dark web" contains information such as Social Security numbers for about 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former account holders.
The company said it has already reset the passcodes of current users and will be communicating with account holders whose sensitive personal information was compromised.
It is not known if the data "originated from AT&T or one of its vendors," the company said in a statement. The compromised data is from 2019 or earlier and does not appear to include financial information or call history, it said. In addition to passcodes and Social Security numbers, it may include email and mailing addresses, phone numbers and birth dates.
While the data surfaced on a hacking forum nearly two weeks ago, it closely resembles a similar data breach that surfaced in 2021 but which AT&T never acknowledged, said cybersecurity researcher Troy Hunt.
