At the beginning of April, it was revealed that AT&T, a telecommunications giant in the United States, experienced a massive data breach. The initial figure disclosed was 7.6 million; they later acknowledged this on their official website, stating that the information of 7.6 million users had been leaked due to an attack, and they were actively contacting these users to reset their passwords.
However, according to a subsequent report by Al Jazeera, AT&T's announcement omitted the majority of the victims. In fact, the 7.6 million only accounted for current customers, with a huge number of former users' information also being found leaked. The total number of victims from this attack amounted to 73 million people, nearly ten times higher than the number they admitted.
According to media reports, the leaked data was comprehensive, including users' full names, email addresses, postal addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, and more. Fortunately, the majority of the leaked data was from records of 2019 and earlier, thus minimizing the impact.
This was not the first time that AT&T has suffered a data breach due to an attack. Three years ago, in 2021, they were attacked and more than 70 million users' information was leaked. The hacker group organizing this attack even boldly sold these data packages on the dark web for a price of 1 million USD.
AT&T, the largest communications service provider in the United States, officially known as the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, not only offers fixed and mobile telecommunication services but also provides broadband and pay television services. Despite being one of the top institutions in America, it has repeatedly suffered attacks leading to the leak of user information.
