AT&T paid $370,009 to a member of the hacking team in return for deleting the stolen data, along with a video demonstration of the deletion as proof.
WIRED reported that the hacker disclosed that the telecom giant finalized the negotiation and paid the ransom last May.
(Photo : Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
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AT&T Provides Ransom in Exchange of Stolen Data Deletion
The hacker is part of the ShinyHunters hacking group which claimed to be responsible for stealing data via unsecured Snowflake cloud storage accounts. A group representative provided the address for the cryptocurrency wallet AT&T used to send the ransom.
WIRED verified and confirmed the transaction through an online blockchain tracking tool. Based on the records, the payment occurred last May 17, amounting to 5.7 bitcoin or $373,646 at the time of the transaction.
The video was also provided to the publication which was used as proof that the stolen data had been deleted from the hacker's computer. Security researcher, Reddington, served as the middleman between the negotiation with AT&T and the hacker.
AT&T Hacker Initially Proposed $1 Million Ransom
According to the report, the hackers initially demanded $1 million from AT&T in exchange for deleting the files. However, both parties managed to settle with only a third of the initial request.
Reddington confirmed the legitimacy of the transaction and shared that he was paid by AT&T for his service. The security researcher was also indirectly credited for detecting the data breach three months ago.
According to him, he believes the entire stolen data was already deleted. All the files were allegedly placed in a cloud server with limited access and the hacker had deleted it from the server based on the video proof.
AT&T has yet to confirm the transaction but the telecom company is just one of the more than 150 companies that allegedly suffered from a massive Snowflake attack last April and May.
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