AT&T Reportedly Paid Hacker $370,000 to Delete Stolen Customer Data

AT&T allegedly negotiated through an intermediary, called Reddington, acting on behalf of a member of the ShinyHunters hacking group. The hacker initially demanded $1 million before AT&T convinced them of the sum, which he paid on May 17 in bitcoin. Cable writing.

According to the outlet, Reddington, who was paid by AT&T for his participation in the negotiations, said he believed the only complete copy of the data was deleted after AT&T paid the ransom, but that it was possible that excerpts were still in circulation. Reddington also reportedly said he negotiated with several other companies on behalf of the hackers.

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