It looks like AT&T experienced a data breach, leaving roughly 9 million customers data exposed. The data breach didn't come directly from the wireless carrier, but occurred with one of its vendors.

The news originates from the AT&T forums, where customers were curious about an email that has apparently been going out to affected customers since last week. The email discusses the breach the wireless carrier experienced, sharing that it occurred with one of its vendor's systems, which gave access to the wireless carrier's "Customer Proprietary Network Information" (CPNI) system.

According to the firm, this system has a variety of different data about its customers, this often includes types of items purchased, how many lines a customer has, and what kind of wireless plan a customer is on. While this already quite a bit of information about a customer, the firm does confirm that the CPNI does not contain more critical data like personal or financial information. Some examples of these types of information would be phone numbers, physical addresses, social security numbers, credit card information and more.

As far as the number, Bleeping Computer was able to get a statement from the company, which shared that roughly nine million customers were affected. For the most part, a data breach is never a good thing, but the wireless carrier has confirmed that it has fixed the issue with the vendor and that the proper steps have been taken with regard to this breach with the proper authorities.

Although this is certainly a bad thing, it could always be worse, with financial data or more personal data being compromised. Luckily for AT&T, that doesn't seem to be the case. Also, when compared to T-Mobile's multiple breaches over the past several years, with its most recent incident exposing 37 million accounts, AT&T's doesn't look all that bad. Of course, not to downplay the incident, as a breach is never a good thing.

Source: AT&T Forums

Via: Bleeping Computer