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AT&T's massive hacking incident, which impacts nearly all of its wireless customers, has prompted a class-action lawsuit that demands the carrier compensate users.
Florida-based Dina Winger filed on Friday in a Texas district court, according to Bloomberg, which first spotted the complaint.
The lawsuit is demanding AT&T pay damages to affected consumers since the data breach threatens to expose them to an increased risk of fraud and identity theft. That’s because the hackers were able to steal call and text records, along with phone numbers, for as many as 109 million AT&T customers. In addition, the hackers had access to AT&T users’ cell-site location data, although no customer names were included in the stolen information.
"This is the second massive data breach that AT&T has announced in 2024,” Winger's lawsuit notes. In March, an archive of AT&T made the rounds online, which sparked its own flood of class-action lawsuits.
“AT&T has not been transparent about the nature and extent of data security lapses impacting its customers,” the lawsuit adds. Winger’s complaint is also seeking nationwide relief and demands that the court force AT&T to bolster its cybersecurity practices.
AT&T declined to comment on the lawsuit. But there’s evidence the carrier actually paid the hackers to delete the stolen data. According to Wired, AT&T forked over $370,000 in Bitcoin back in May to a member of the hacking group ShinyHunters, which stole the carrier’s data from an unsecured cloud storage account at Snowflake.
The hackers reportedly recorded a video to prove the stolen data had been deleted. Still, it’s possible samples or copies of the stolen AT&T data remain in circulation, although AT&T says investigators have arrested one member of the hacking group.