A notorious hacking group, known as Shiny Hunters, is reportedly selling a database containing private details of 70 million AT&T customers. However, AT&T, an American telecommunication provider denied suffering from a data breach.
Last week, ShinyHunters posted a sale for “AT&T database + 70M (SSN/DOB)” on RaidForums, a popular Darkweb marketplace. Threat actors set the bidding with a starting price of $200,000 and incremental offers of $30,000. Apart from this, there is also a flash sale where customers can buy the entire database for $1 million.
"In the original post that we discovered on a hacker forum, the user posted a relatively small sample of the data. We examined the sample and it appears to be authentic based on available public records,” Sven Taylor of RestorePrivacy, who first reported the data breach, stated.
ShinyHunters shared a sample subset of stolen data, name, contact numbers, physical addresses, social security numbers (SSN), and dates of birth. An anonymous security expert told BleepingComputer that two of the four people in the samples were identified users in the AT&T database. The hackers are also working on decrypting the data that they believe comprises customer accounts’ PINs.
"Based on our investigation today, the information that appeared in an internet chat room does not appear to have come from our systems," AT&T responded to the claims of ShinyHunters.
In a follow-up email to BleepingComputer, the telecom provider hedged over whether the data could have been stolen from a third party: “Given this information did not come from us, we can’t speculate on where it came from or whether it is valid,” the firm stated.
In the past, ShinyHunters has targeted the likes of Microsoft, Mashable, Tokopedia, BigBasket, Nitro PDF, Pixlr, TeeSpring, Promo.com, Mathway, and droves of other small-to-mid-sized platforms. Its modus operandi is to steal credentials, API keys or buy large troves of data, then dump and sell it on underground platforms.
Earlier this month, a fellow Telecom provider, T-Mobile suffered a data breach that exposed the private details of tens of millions of its users. To address the issue, T-Mobile assured its users to provide free identity protection services.
