AT&T recently made headlines after reportedly negotiating with an intermediary known as Reddington, who was acting on behalf of the ShinyHunters hacking group. The hacker initially demanded $1 million, but AT&T managed to bring the amount down through negotiations before ultimately paying the ransom in bitcoin on May 17th, as reported by Wired.
According to the same outlet, Reddington, who received payment from AT&T for his role in the negotiations, expressed belief that the sole complete copy of the data had been erased following the ransom payment. However, there is still a possibility that fragments of the data are circulating. Reddington also disclosed that he had engaged in negotiations with multiple other companies on behalf of the hackers.
Prior to AT&T disclosing the breach, reports surfaced of compromises at Ticketmaster and Santander Bank, stemming from the theft of login credentials from an employee of third-party cloud storage provider, Snowflake. Wired further revealed that following the Ticketmaster incident, hackers utilized a script to potentially breach over 160 companies concurrently.
