AT&T reportedly negotiated through a middleman, named Reddington, who acted on behalf of a member of the ShinyHunters hacking group. The hacker originally asked for $1 million before AT&T reduced the amount, which he paid on May 17 in bitcoin. With cable writes.
The outlet reports that Reddington, who was paid by AT&T for his part in the negotiations, said he believes the only complete copy of the data had been deleted after AT&T paid the ransom, but that fragments may still be circulating. Reddington also reportedly said he negotiated with several other companies for the hackers.
Before AT&T announced the breach, Ticketmaster and Santander Bank were also reportedly compromised, via stolen login credentials from an employee of third-party cloud storage company Snowflake. With cable reports that after the Ticketmaster attack, hackers used a script to potentially hack more than 160 companies simultaneously.
