AT&T confirms every customer's data was hacked

The call and text message records of tens of millions of AT&T cellphone customers have been exposed in a massive data breach.

The company blamed an "illegal download" on a third-party cloud platform and said the compromised data includes the telephone numbers of "nearly all" of its cellular customers between May 1, 2022 and October 31, 2022.

AT&T said it learned of the breach in April. It immediately engaged cybersecurity experts to help determine the nature and scope of the issue and steps were taken to close off the illegal access point.

"We are working with law enforcement in its efforts to arrest those involved in the incident. We understand that at least one person has been apprehended," the company said in a statement .

The content of the calls and texts were not exposed, and the data doesn't include personal information such as birth dates or Social Security numbers.

"The call and text records identify the phone numbers with which an AT&T number interacted during this period, including AT&T landline (home phone) customers," the company said. "It also included counts of those calls or texts and total call durations for specific days or months."

AT&T said customer names were not exposed in this incident, but phone numbers were -- and those can be linked back to individuals.

"While the data does not include customer names, there are often ways, using publicly available online tools, to find the name associated with a specific telephone number," the company explained.

AT&T said it didn't believe the information from the breach, which is separate from one reported earlier this year, has been released publicly.

"We sincerely regret this incident occurred and remain committed to protecting the information in our care," the company said. "We will provide notice to current and former customers whose information was involved along with resources to help protect their information."

In a separate incident in April, the personal information of more than 70 million current and former AT&T customers was leaked on the dark web.