J
Jeff Causey
Guest
AT&T has reported a data breach that occurred between April 9th and April 21st by three employees of a third-party vendor working with AT&T. According to the report, the vendor’s employees had access to a wide swath of users’ personal information including call record, social security numbers, and possibly financial data like credit card numbers. However, none of that information was the target of the hackers. Instead, the employees were trying to secure unlock codes to be used to unlock AT&T phones. AT&T’s report of the breach came out in a filing with the state of California, where breaches involving at least 500 customers must be reported.
AT&T has issued a letter to affected customers letting them know their data was accessed inappropriately. In a public statement from AT&T, the company says, “We have taken steps to help prevent this from happening again, notified affected customers, and reported this matter to law enforcement.”
It is not clear whether the phones that the hackers were trying to unlock were legitimately on the second-hand market or if they were phones that had been reported stolen. With the unlock codes, the phones could be reactivated to be used on AT&T’s network or in the U.S. on the T-Mobile network since the two are similar. Likewise, the phones could be activated in foreign markets that may not have access to a shared database that major U.S. carriers use to try to prevent the inappropriate unlocking of phones. The CTIA has launched an effort to deploy a global, multi-carrier, common database for LTE smartphones. By implementing these measures to prevent the inappropriate unlocking of phones, the carriers hope the trouble will be a disincentive to thieves.
source: FierceWireless
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