Newscenter Media News One of America’s biggest phone operators, AT&T reportedly paid the sum of $400,000 to hackers to erase stolen data after customer information was compromised in an attack.
A hacker who is taking credit for the incident claims to have been paid almost $400,000 in Bitcoin to remove the stolen data after the attack, according to WIRED.
A transaction in a Bitcoin wallet address supplied by the hacker was found through an analysis conducted by blockchain security company Chainalysis Inc. This transaction corresponds with the timeframe mentioned for the extortion payment.
Furthermore, AT&T did pay the ransom, according to an anonymous source with knowledge of the negotiations. It is unclear if there was a middleman in this payment.
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The compromised data comprises the following, per AT&T’s disclosure to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): call and text message records for nearly all AT&T cellular customers, call and text message records for customers of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) that utilize AT&T’s network.
Call and text message records for AT&T landline customers who interacted with the aforementioned cellular numbers between May 1, 2022, and October 31, 2022, were also compromised.
While customer names were not directly exposed, AT&T admits that it may be possible to identify people connected to particular phone numbers using publicly accessible internet resources, according to a report published by USA Today.
The company revealed in a statement that call logs from consumers having phone service from other cell carriers that depend on AT&T’s network are also included in the stolen data.
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