Five things to know about the AT&T data breach

AT&T says calls and text message records for tens of millions of the phone service provider’s customers were exposed in a massive data breach two years ago.

The company announced Friday that nearly all of its mobile phone customers’ information was exposed over the course of months in 2022. The data stolen includes “records of calls and texts of nearly all of AT&T’s cellular customers,” AT&T said in a statement.

It marks one of the largest private communications data breaches in recent history, Bloomberg reports.

AT&T said it learned about an “illegal download” of data from a third-party cloud platform called Snowflake (more on that later) in April. The news came about a month after the company was dealing with a separate data leak where customers’ personal information was posted on the dark web. AT&T told CNN the data leak and freshly announced breach are unrelated.

The company said it hired experts to investigate the cloud data’s compromise after a “threat actor” said they “unlawfully accessed and copied” AT&T’s call logs on April 19. AT&T said Friday that experts determined that the hackers accessed files from April 14 to 25.

According to AT&T, the U.S. Department of Justice directed the company to delay its disclosure to the public.

In a statement provided to The Inquirer, the FBI confirmed a delay in public disclosure citing an SEC rule regarding public safety.

The Justice Department and FBI confirmed both agencies were working with AT&T in an ongoing investigation.

Compromised data includes the following, according to AT&T:

— Telephone numbers of “nearly all” AT&T cellular customers from May 1 through Oct. 31, 2022

— Telephone numbers of customers of wireless providers that use AT&T’s network from May 1 through Oct. 31, 2022

— Phone logs of the aforementioned customers, which include records of every number customers texted — including people on other wireless networks — along with the number of times they interacted

— Phone logs of the aforementioned customers with records of every number they called — including people on other wireless networks — and how long the calls lasted

AT&T had about 110 million wireless subscribers at the end of 2022, according to the company.