Massive AT&T hack compromises phone text records of “nearly all” customers
I have no expertise in securing vital systems and data, but surely, there is a way to detect hacking attempts or successes in less than two years.
The scary thing is that such delays give consumers no chance to protect themselves when their data has been compromised. In this instance, the information gleaned doesn’t seem particularly alarming, and given the length of time that has passed, it doesn’t seem to have caused much harm. But future hacks will.
Why does it take so long to discover hacks like this? Is this a failure of companies to properly secure their systems, or is it an intractable technical challenge?
I do not know the details of this hack. I have had some experience with corporate security … Could be unpatched systems, unknown system vulnerability, even inside-job … my best guess/hypothesis is that the hackers deliberately held back on exploiting the information they gleaned which means that customers (and AT&T) did not notice anything amis. Might have had or have a plan to now do something. Frankly, I doubt we’ll ever know.
It’s hard to be shocked anymore. Massive breaches like this one at AT&T have been occurring for years. And I thought we already knew that all our telephone traffic is passed through the government’s national security apparatus?
I know. I have traveled to several authoritarian countries and am very much aware of the persecution of the religious in these countries. I was merely attempting to be humorous. I think I’ll keep my day job. Clearly, I’m not equipped to be a standup comedian.
AFAIK, all the US credit bureaus have been breached multiple times and I’ve been offered free credit monitoring by two companies in the past twelve months. I’m not sure what, if anything, is actually private these days.
I think it’s particularly infuriating that we — both the customers and the broader US public — aren’t given any idea of how the breach was discovered and what AT&T is doing to prevent this from happening again. Nor is it made clear what the US government is doing (or failing to do) in helping prevent such security failures.
In this case, we have to assume the worst, that AT&T did not discover the breach at all. When the data was released, that’s when they knew about it.
In time, more information might be available from tech/secuirty journalists, but the mainstream press is doing a horrible job of reporting these issues.
It is not realistic to expect “mainstream media” to cover this. Not their narrative. I’m expecting (hoping) independant media to cover it, best they can.
“Based on its investigation, AT&T believes that threat actors unlawfully accessed an AT&T workspace on a third-party cloud platform and, between April 14 and April 25, 2024, exfiltrated files containing AT&T records of customer call and text interactions that occurred between approximately May 1 and October 31, 2022, as well as on January 2, 2023,”
From what I’ve read the AT&T breach occurred at a third party SAS company and affected most/all of their customers, not just ATT.
My impression is that even if people are upset AT&T has such a market position that people are unlikely to move to a different carrier in significant numbers.
I am older. I remember when companies wanted to move to server-based computing, one of the arguments was that it was safer because they had better security measures.
If (hypothetically) the valet at the local hospital made a wax copy of your car key while they parked your car, how long would it take you to know that had happened?
The financial incentives are substantially different for the criminals and the companies.
The sticker price of the average new car is $44,000. Even if you de-rate the number by 50%, that’s $22,000. But nobody can reasonably afford to spend $22,000 protecting their car from a thief. So you do what you can, and bank on the fact that your neighbor’s garage is easier to break into.
Where I am there is very little choice in carriers simply due to lack of cell tower infrastructure. We happen to have 2 choices now, ATT or T-Mobile (After the Sprint merger) There is no Verizon service at all. ATT is actually spotty in our valley so everyone here uses T-Mobile. AFAIK all of the carriers have been breached at once time or another.
Breaches like this one will continue as long as businesses continue to collect and retain far more personal customer data than they require to provide goods and services.
