A hacker is selling a huge file on the dark web, claiming it originated from a 2021 data breach at US telecommunications giant AT&T; However, the company denies that the data originated from its servers.
beepcomputer reported that a threat actor with the alias ShinyHunters posted an ad on RaidForums for the sale of sensitive data belonging to 71 million AT&T customers.
The database contains people's names, addresses, mobile phone numbers, dates of birth, social security numbers and other sensitive information. The publication analyzed a sample of the data and confirmed its authenticity. It is impossible to determine at this time whether the entire database is legitimate or not.
Violation history
ShinyHunters' starting price is $200,000, with incremental bids of $30,000. It was said that they would sell the database immediately for an offer of $1 million.
However, when the publication approached AT&T, it said the data was not its own: “Based on our investigation today, information that appeared in an Internet chat room does not appear to come from our systems,” AT&T said. beepcomputer in 2021. ShinyHunters, on the other hand, responded that “they don't care if they don't admit it.”
AT&T has a history of malware and data breaches. About a year ago, the company warned millions of its users that some of their sensitive data was exposed in a supply chain cyberattack. Apparently, a marketing vendor was breached a few months earlier, resulting in data being stolen from AT&T.
In that incident, nine million of its customers were affected, and hackers stole customer-owned network information from some wireless accounts. That includes, among other things, the number of lines on a wireless account or rate plan.
Even earlier, in July 2020, it emerged that some AT&T employees accepted bribes to install malware on their network. Two people, later discovered to be Muhammad Fahd and Ghulam Jiwani, were accused of paying more than $1 million in bribes to several AT&T employees at the telecommunications company's Mobility Customer Care call center in Washington.
