Hackers steal call, text record of “nearly all” AT&T customers – National & International News – FRI 12Jul2024

Hackers steal call, text records of “nearly all” AT&T customers.

White supremacist who kept Black woman as sex slave charged in another’s murder.

Biden doubles down on candidacy, Ukraine escalation at NATO summit.

NATIONAL NEWS

Hackers steal call, text records of “nearly all” AT&T customers

AT&T has revealed that a data breach compromised over 6 months of call and text records for nearly all of its customers. The records ranged from roughly May 1 and Oct. 31, 2022, and the records from Jan. 2, 2023 were also stolen. The company says that the content of calls and texts was not compromised. What the hackers obtained is known as metadata, essentially the records of what phone numbers placed or received calls or texts and at what time and the length of phone calls.

AT&T says the breach did not include the names or other identifying information connected to the numbers, but that hackers could potentially match names to numbers through publicly available sources. 

The FBI is investigating the breach and the potential threat it could pose. AT&T discovered the breach in April but investigators asked for a delay in announcing the attack publicly due to the national security implications. At least one person has been taken into custody in connection with the hack.

What’s more worrisome is that previously in March, the customer names of about 7.6 million current AT&T customers were compromised. The data, which dated before 2019, was available on the dark web. Currently, no reporting suggests that the same perpetrators were behind both breaches. However, if the perpetrators of the May and June hacks had access to that data, they could potentially put names to those customers’ numbers in the metadata they collected.

Click here for the full story (opens in new tab).

White Missouri man who imprisoned Black woman in basement charged in another’s murder

In October 2022, a young Black woman identified in court papers as T.J. escaped after a hellish month of captivity during which her captor, a white man, repeatedly whipped and raped her in a purpose-built sex dungeon in his basement. T.J. managed to escape the home of Timothy Haslett, 39 at the time, while Haslett took his child to school. She ran to the home of Haslett’s neighbor, who described T.J. as emaciated and nearly naked except for some latex lingerie.

T.J.’s escape from the home in a Kansas City suburb followed months of calls from local Black community leaders for a police investigation into the disappearance of several young Black women. Those calls went unheeded until T.J.’s escape. The Kansas City Defender, a local Black-owned newspaper, dug into Haslett’s social media history and found that Haslett subscribed to a white supremacist ideology.

When T.J. escaped, she told investigators that Haslett had told her he had previously killed two other women he had imprisoned. One, Haslett told her, was killed with a gas mask and the other died by electrocution during a sex act. T.J. said  Haslett had threatened to kill her and put her in a barrel “like the rest of them” if she did not cooperate.

In July 2023, the remains of another Black woman named Jayne Crosdale were found inside a blue plastic barrel floating in the Missouri river. The barrel was similar to barrel’s found in Haslett’s home. Investigators believe that Crosdale was killed between June 6, 2022, and Oct. 7, 2022. Images on Haslett’s phone showed Crosdale in his basement. Haslett has now been charged with first-degree murder in Crosdale’s death.

There’s not yet any public information about an investigation into the second potential murder alluded to in T.J.’s account.

Click here for the full story (opens in new tab).

INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Biden doubles down on candidacy, Ukraine escalation at NATO summit

Over a dozen Congressional Democrats have so far called on President Biden to end his re-election bid following last month’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump. Last night, he held a much-anticipated “big boy” press conference meant to allay fears about his ability to both win the race and perform his duties.

Overall, he was much more with it than he was during the debate, although there were a few major gaffes. He also rambled at times and lost his train of thought several times, trailing off with “well, anyway…”. The most notable sound byte was when he called his Vice President Kamala Harris “Vice President Trump” while answering the very first question from the press.

It appears that this conference was not successful in ending the growing push for him to end his campaign. In fact, even before the press conference, members of Congress told CBS that dozens of Democrats are poised to come forward with statements over the coming days, regardless of how the press conference went. Despite this, Biden is carrying on making campaign appearances, appearing in Michigan today.

Biden intensifies NATO presence in Europe, secures more Ukraine aid

As it happens, even before the conference, Biden had yet another seriously embarrassing gaffe at the NATO summit when he introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”.

However, there were much more concerning developments from the point of view of increasing tensions in Europe. Firstly, President Zelensky called on the assembled NATO leaders to allow Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to strike at Russian military bases deep within Russia. Such an escalation would be sure to elicit a much more severe response from Russia.

President Putin has already threatened to retaliate against Western targets after Biden authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied long-range weapons systems against targets in Russia, but only in the region bordering the Ukrainian region of Kharkiv. Later at the conference, Biden indicated that the current limitations would remain in place. It’s worth considering that Biden had previously ruled out sending fighter jets to Ukraine. Now 18 months later, dozens of US-made F-16s are due to arrive in Ukraine by the end of this year.

Even more worrisome was the announcement that the US will position long-range cruise missiles in Germany starting in 2026. This is the first time there has been such a deployment since the Cold War. Predictably, the announcement provoked anger in Moscow. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov promised a “military response to the new threat”.