AT&T and T-Mobile customers can band together to hate on the same man as hacker identity is revealed
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The man responsible for stealing data on T-Mobile customers in 2021 might also be responsible for the recently disclosed AT&T data breach.
AT&T revealed yesterday that the phone data on nearly all its customers was downloaded by a hacker in 2022. The company said that call and text message metadata was stolen from third-party cloud system Snowflake which held its records.
The intrusion exposed phone records of over 100 million customers but it did not include customer names, the contents of calls or texts, or sensitive data such as Social Security numbers.
AT&T revealed yesterday that the phone data on nearly all its customers was downloaded by a hacker in 2022. The company said that call and text message metadata was stolen from third-party cloud system Snowflake which held its records.
This doesn't make the incident any less concerning as it's not hard to trace back phone numbers to individuals and reveal connections between people that are supposed to remain private. A subset of the record could even be used to determine an individual's location.
John Binns, the American hacker who admitted to breaking into T-Mobile's servers in 2021 is being linked with the AT&T breach by authorities. Binns, 24, was apprehended in Turkey earlier this year.
While Binns may not be solely responsible for the AT&T attack, he is believed to be among those who plotted to steal logs related to phone calls and text messages sent and received by customers in 2022.
It's being reported that at least one person has already been arrested by law enforcement officials and that person is allegedly Binns, who is already in detention in Turkey.
Authorities are still investigating the identities of other people who helped Binns get into AT&T's system.
When Binns confessed to breaching T-Mobile's servers, he said he wanted to create awareness about the carrier's awful security. That was supposedly not his only motive, as he allegedly also sold customer information on dark web forums, which are frequented by cybercriminals.
According to AT&T, there's no evidence that data on its customers was shared publicly.
While Binns may not be solely responsible for the AT&T attack, he is believed to be among those who plotted to steal logs related to phone calls and text messages sent and received by customers in 2022.
It's being reported that at least one person has already been arrested by law enforcement officials and that person is allegedly Binns, who is already in detention in Turkey.
Authorities are still investigating the identities of other people who helped Binns get into AT&T's system.
When Binns confessed to breaching T-Mobile's servers, he said he wanted to create awareness about the carrier's awful security. That was supposedly not his only motive, as he allegedly also sold customer information on dark web forums, which are frequented by cybercriminals.
According to AT&T, there's no evidence that data on its customers was shared publicly.
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