Tag: telecommunications

US firm AT&T says data of 73 million customers leaked on ‘dark web’ | Telecommunications News

At least 7.6 million existing AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former users hit by the breach, the company says.

Personal information belonging to millions of past and present AT&T customers has been leaked online, including Social Security numbers (SSNs), passcodes and contact details, the multinational company says.

In a statement on Saturday, the telecommunication network – the largest in the United States – said a recently discovered dataset on the “dark web” contained information for about 7.6 million current AT&T account holders and 65.4 million former users, totalling about 73 million affected accounts.

It is not known if the breach “originated from AT&T or one of its vendors”, the company said.

“To the best of our knowledge, the compromised data appears to be from 2019 or earlier and does not contain personal financial information or call history,” the statement added.

All 7.6 million existing account holders whose sensitive personal information was compromised were set to be notified about the breach AT&T. The company said it had already reset passcodes and was investigating the incident.

In addition to passcodes and SSNs, the hacked data possibly included email and mailing addresses, phone numbers and birth dates, AT&T added.

Reports of the breach first surfaced on a hacking forum nearly two weeks ago. It is unclear if the leak is linked to a similar breach in 2021 that was widely reported but that AT&T did not acknowledge.

A hacker at the time claimed to have access to data of 70 million AT&T customers, including their names, addresses, phone numbers, SSNs, and date of birth.

Auction data on a hacking forum revealed the hacker attempted to sell the stolen information for thousands of dollars.

“If they assess this and they made the wrong call on it, and we’ve had a course of years pass without them being able to notify impacted customers” then it’s likely the company will soon face class action lawsuits, cybersecurity expert Troy Hunt told The Associated Press news agency.

Troy, the creator of Have I Been Pwned? – a website that alerts subscribers to data breaches – said in a blogpost at least 153,000 of his customers were affected.

The Dallas-based company faced challenges earlier in February after an outage temporarily knocked out mobile phone service for thousands of users.

AT&T blamed the incident on a technical coding error, not a malicious attack. Other networks were also affected, but AT&T appeared to be the hardest hit.



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Researchers Develop Topological Insulators That Could One Day Allow Efficient Light-Based Computing

Photonic materials are the ones that emit, detect or manipulate light. These materials play a crucial role in various sectors such as telecommunications, data processing and storage, and solar cells. Because of their vast usage, there is a continuous need to make them efficient. Researchers, at the University of Central Florida (UCF), are developing new photonic materials that could one day enable ultra-fast, light-based computing. Known as topological insulators, the unique materials are like wires that have been turned inside out, meaning they carry the current on the outside while the interiors are insulated.

The researchers believe topological insulators hold importance as they could be used in circuit designs with more processing power without generating heat. This would remove a big problem in today’s devices — overheating.

The UCF researchers have published their findings in the journal Nature Materials. In the study, they have detailed a new approach to create the materials, using the chained, honeycomb lattice design.

Researchers have said the new photonic materials they developed overcome drawbacks of contemporary topological designs, offering more features and control. It also minimises power losses. They have confirmed their findings using advanced imaging techniques and numerical simulations.

The group hopes that their design will lead to a departure from traditional modulation techniques, bringing light-based computing one step closer to reality.

“Bimorphic topological insulators introduce a new paradigm shift in the design of photonic circuitry by enabling secure transport of light packets with minimal losses,” UCF’s postdoctoral researcher and the study’s lead author Georgios Pyrialakos said in a statement.

Researchers added that topological insulators could allow the use of faster photonic computers that use less energy and could also one day lead to quantum computing, thus allowing processing power hundreds of millions of times faster than today’s computers.

The development of new photonic materials plays a vital role in the growth of information technology in the 21st century.

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