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AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

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Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#51

Post by robcohen »

dtx1 wrote: post #43
rustcleaner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wet dream would be a dump of all SMS or Meta or iMessage messages for a multiyear period for nearly 90% of users. Only when Normie Norman's private chats to his mistress and other little relationship trust disrupting secrets become uncensorably hosted on the darknet and freely searchable, only then will Normie Norman get a clue and install SimpleX/Briar/Cwtch/any other owner-free decentralized p2p chat.

While I share the sentiment, Normie Norman is not at fault. Meta and other BigCorps are the perpetrators and Norman the Victim.

I have to disagree. He is a fault. Ultimately, you are the only person who really should care about your own security. When you delegate that responsibility, you are still the one who made that choice.

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#52

Post by ffsm8 »

ungreased0675 wrote: post #35

So, AT&T wasn’t using MFA? A lot of information can be derived from analysis of call records. If this information becomes public, it could be disastrous.

> If this information becomes public, it could be disastrous.

Isn't it even worse if it doesn't become public? It's been downloaded by an unauthorized party after all, so if they're not publishing the data, I'd wager they've found another way to profit from it. I.e. blackmail or similar.

I guess it depends on your viewpoint wherever that's better or worse.

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#53

Post by sickofparadox »

John23832 wrote: post #9

How has Snowflake felt ANY recourse for being the source of all of these hacks?

The Mandiant report said that some Snowflake customers declined to use MFA AND had passwords in place for 4+ years[1]. Maybe Snowflake should have pushed for MFA harder but at the end of the day, this is AT&T's fault.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/unc...

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#54

Post by lotsofpulp »

hypeatei wrote: post #42
xyzzy4747 wrote: post #37

It's interesting when you have these old, large, sprawling bureaucratic organizations and the employees hardly give a sh!t anymore and allow for these large vulnerabilities. It's not a money issue, it's a caring issue I think.

Our economic system is at odds with security because we're trying to "get by" as cheap as possible. That doesn't bode well for protection of users' data.

During the last decade, ATT’s leaders decided to burn tens of billions of dollars by overpaying for obviated businesses like DirecTV and Time Warner.

I can only imagine the quality of mobile and fiber networking we could have had if that money was spent on telecommunications. And maybe they would have spent a few million on having proper security.

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#55

Post by nimbius »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #29
smcin wrote: post #8

Ongoing fallout from the Snowflake compromise; AT&T knew on Apr 19 but only disclosed now (Why does this not fall under SOX violation with the obligation to report timely to affected parties? It has affected AT&T's stock price -3% in early trading, so shouldn't it have also required SEC disclosure?) - Records downloaded from Snowflake cloud platform - AT&T will notify 110 million AT&T customers - Compromised data inc…

According to CNN: “The company said the US Department of Justice Department determined in May and in June that a delay in public disclosure was warranted. It’s not clear why that the US government requested that data be delayed. CNN has reached out to the Justice Department for comment.”

May 16 Dow Jones Industrial Average surpasses 40,000 points for the first time, before closing at 39,869.

public disclosure of a cataclysmic security breach in a darling of the stock market could have significant repercussions.

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#56

Post by smcin »

morkalork wrote: post #44
floatrock wrote: post #26

> In a statement, AT&T said that the stolen data contains phone numbers of both cellular and landline customers, as well as AT&T records of calls and text messages — such as who contacted who by phone or text — during a six-month period between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022. AT&T customer? Prepare for phone calls / text messages from your most frequent contacts saying "I got stranded / I'm Officer Blahblahman help…

I guess everyone is going to learn what Snowden was worried about the hard way now. I imagine there's going to be extortion attempts over calls to abortion clinics etc.

Among other things. The data's mostly from May-Oct 2022.

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#57

Post by shrimp_emoji »

rustcleaner wrote: post #50
dtx1 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I share the sentiment, Normie Norman is not at fault. Meta and other BigCorps are the perpetrators and Norman the Victim.

True, but you have to admit once you really see Normie Norman you come to understand aristocracy. At least I do anyway.

https://dwm.suckless.org/

> Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist.

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#58

Post by ghaff »

ectospheno wrote: post #49
ghaff wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from a couple non-US friends, I know no one in the US who uses anything other than straight SMS (and Apple iMessage). I'm sure they exist but certainly not in the circle of people I communicate with.

Everyone I know uses signal. Different people really are different.

For whatever reason, chat seems to definitely encourage tribalism. The last company I worked for eventually bought into Slack because so many people WOULD NOT use anything else while a lot of us were like "ANOTHER chat app??" because we were perfectly happy with Gchat which we had as part of Google Workplace.

I know there are some historical reasons for non-SMS because of text pricing outside the US but everyone I know in the US would look at you funny if you wanted to use some special app for texting.

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#59

Post by swarnie »

Why would AT&T even need to keep this data?

All i can think of is billing for a fraction of plans from the early 2000s who still pay per min/per text. Or maybe for capacity metrics but even then you only need the overall data point not the actual records once collaborated.

What's the US law for keeping data as long as its relevant and needed?

Re: AT&T says criminals stole phone records of 'nearly all' customers in data breach

#60

Post by sitkack »

smcin wrote: post #17
buro9 wrote: post #6

Including all location metadata associated to that?

The reports said celltower-level location data associated with calls and texts (but not datestamps). That would allow inferring their homes, job location, commute, family members, social graph.

You can still recover that without timestamps. It also looks like if anyone interacted with an ATT customer or used an MVNO your data is in there too.
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