About 73M current, former account holders impacted by data leak linked to dark web: AT&T

(The Hill) — Around 73 million current and former AT&T account holders have been impacted following this month’s data set leak to the dark web.  

AT&T said it is investigating the data set leak which impacted about 7.6 million current account holders and 65.4 million former account holders, according to the telecom company. 

The preliminary analysis showed the data set is from 2019 or earlier, according to the company. AT&T said it currently does not have evidence of unauthorized access to its systems from this month’s leak. 

The company’s investigation is backed by “internal and external cybersecurity experts.”

The telecom company said it is “not yet known” if the data originated from AT&T or one of its vendors while the source of the data is being assessed.  

The incident has not had a material impact on the telecom company’s operations. 

AT&T, whose 5G network reaches around 295 million people in the U.S., is in communication with customers impacted by the leak and will offer “credit monitoring.” 

Last month, the company had an outage impacting users around the country. Users experienced issues with wireless connections. The incident prompted a federal investigation involving the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the FBI. 

After the hours-long outages in February, the company said it would give impacted users $5 credit.