Bad News, AT&T Wireless Customers

AT&T delivered some stunning news to customers on Friday morning: "Nearly all" of its wireless subscribers were caught up in a data breach, in which hackers swiped call and text metadata from a third-party cloud system, reports the Wall Street Journal. In a securities filing, the company said it hadn't found evidence that the stolen information, which was downloaded in April, was shared publicly. AT&T also said that the breach didn't include the content of calls or messages, or personal information like subscriber names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, credit card data, or "other personally identifiable information," per ABC News.

What the breached data did include was "details about how different phone numbers interacted with each other," per the Journal. The vast majority of the records covered the time period between May 2022 and October of that same year, with a small portion from January 2023. The paper notes the hack is the latest breach involving telecom companies, including a separate AT&T leak disclosed earlier this year and a "malicious intruder" at T-Mobile disclosed in 2023. AT&T says one suspect has been apprehended in this latest case and that the company is cooperating with law enforcement. Meanwhile, MarketWatch reports that AT&T's stock fell 3% after the company revealed the hack. (More AT&T stories.)