US communications service provider AT&T has confirmed that threat actors were able to access data belonging to “almost all” of its wireless customers, as well as mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) customers that use AT&T’s wireless network.
“Threat entities illegally accessed AT&T’s third-party cloud platform workspace and between April 14 and April 25, 2024, stole files containing AT&T records of customer call and text interactions that occurred between approximately May 1 and April 31 October 2022, as well as January 2, 2023,” the message reads said.
This includes the phone numbers with which AT&T wireless or MVNO numbers interacted, including the phone numbers of AT&T landline customers and customers of other carriers, the number of those interactions, and the total call duration per day or month.
A subset of these records also contained one or more cell site ID numbers, potentially allowing threat actors to triangulate a customer’s approximate location while making a call or sending a text message. AT&T said it would notify current and former customers if their information was involved.
“The threat actors used data from previous hacks to match phone numbers to individuals,” said Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker and lecturer at IANS Research. “What the threat actors stole here are data records (CDRs), which are a gold mine in intelligence analysis because they can be used to understand who is talking to whom — and when.”
AT&T’s list of MVNOs includes Black Wireless, Boost Infinite, Consumer Cellular, Cricket Wireless, FreedomPop, FreeUp Mobile, Good2Go, H2O Wireless, PureTalk, Red Pocket, Straight Talk Wireless, TracFone Wireless, Unreal Mobile and Wing.
AT&T’s third-party cloud provider has not been named, but Snowflake has since confirmed that the breach was related to one that affected other customers such as Ticketmaster, Santander, Neiman Marcus and LendingTree. Bloomberg.
The company said it became aware of the incident on April 19, 2024 and took immediate action to respond. He also noted that he is cooperating with law enforcement in their efforts to arrest those involved and that “at least one person has been detained.”
404 mass media informed that a 24-year-old US citizen named John Binns, who was previously arrested in Turkey in May 2024, linked to a security event, citing three unnamed sources. In the US, he was also accused of hacking into T-Mobile in 2021 and selling customer data.
However, he emphasized that the information obtained does not include the content of calls or text messages, personal information such as social security numbers, dates of birth or other personal information.
“While the data does not include customer names, there are often ways to find a name associated with a particular phone number using publicly available online tools,” it said. said on Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
It also encourages users to watch out for phishing, smishing and online scams by only opening text messages from trusted senders. Additionally, customers can submit a request to retrieve the phone numbers of their calls and text messages in illegally downloaded data.
The a malicious cyber campaign The targeting of Snowflake resulted in 165 customers being targeted, with Google-owned Mandiant attributing the activity to a financially motivated threat actor called UNC5537, which covers “members located in North America and working with an additional member in Turkey “.
Criminals have demanded payments of $300,000 to $5 million in exchange for stolen data. Recent developments show that the effects of cybercrime are expanding in scale and cascading.
WIRELESS revealed last month, as the hackers behind the Snowflake data thefts obtained stolen Snowflake credentials from dark web services that sell access to usernames, passwords and authentication tokens captured by the stealing malware. This included gaining access through a third-party contractor, EPAM Systems.
For her part, Snowflake this week announced that administrators can now enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all users to reduce the risk of account hijacking. He also said that MFA will soon be required for all users on newly created Snowflake accounts.
