AT&T Reportedly Gave $370,000 to a Hacker to Delete Its Stolen Customer Data

A lot of cover stories for the AT&T hack today including this gem where they negotiated and paid a hacker to delete the data stolen. Yeah, like you can trust a hacker to delete the data. You’d have to think the AT&T advertising spending with these publications has increased greatly. Consequently, you’d also have to wonder if a lot of these hacking incidents circle back to the WEF and their fearmongering of cyber attacks disrupting society, which of course we are quite sure they’d perpetrate as a psyop on society to push digital ID and coming social credit system. My previous post on the AT&T hack had additional information on protecting your credit history.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/14/24198294/att-paid-370000-ransom-hacked-customer-data-deleted-may

The company negotiated through an intermediary security researcher, according to Wired.

By Wes Davis

AT&T paid a hacker about $370,000 to delete customer data that was stolen from it as part of a hacking spree earlier this year. The hacker then provided a video to prove they had deleted the data, according to a Wired report today.

AT&T reportedly negotiated through an intermediary, called Reddington, acting on behalf of a member of the ShinyHunters hacking group. The hacker originally asked for $1 million before AT&T talked them down to the amount, which it paid on May 17th in bitcoin, Wired writes.

The outlet reports that Reddington, whom AT&T paid for his part in negotiations, said he believes the only complete copy of the data had been deleted after AT&T paid the ransom, but that it’s possible excerpts are still in the wild. Reddington also reportedly said he negotiated with several other companies for the hackers, too.

Before AT&T announced the breach, it was reported that Ticketmaster and Santander Bank were also compromised, via the stolen login credentials of an employee of third-party cloud storage company Snowflake. Wired reports that, after the Ticketmaster attack, hackers used a script to hack potentially more than 160 companies simultaneously.