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Hackers Steal Text and Call Records of ‘Nearly All’ AT&T Customers

In one of the most significant data breaches in recent history, hackers stole AT&T customers’ call and text metadata spanning several months.
AT&T logos.
Image: Mike Mozart.

Hackers broke into a cloud platform used by AT&T and downloaded call and text records of “nearly all” of AT&T’s cellular customers across a several month period, AT&T announced early on Friday.

The stolen data, which mostly impacts calls and texts made between May 2022 and October 2022, presents a hugely significant and unprecedented data breach for AT&T and the telecom industry more broadly. Metadata—which shows what numbers a customer interacted with—is typically only available to law enforcement in a targeted way under legal process. Here, outside hackers managed to steal the data themselves. In its announcement AT&T said it believes that authorities have already apprehended one of the people involved in the breach. 

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