AT&T Sues Former Employees Charged of Trying to Unlock Phones

Softpedia.com reported on 21st September, 2015 stating that Atlanta-based AT&T has sued 3 former call center employees charging them of installing malicious software on their servers in trying to help a phone unlocking service to obtain AT&T unlock codes.

Almost all mobile carriers all over the world sell phones along with their mobile plans. These phones are normally locked and so customers can not skip ship to another carrier without paying fully for the phone or without finishing their contract.

FCC has forced AT&T in US to provide unlock codes to all users who have finished their contract or who have paid fee to leave the service.

This code can be generally obtained from AT&T call centers by using a special service known as Torch.

AT&T has filed legal documents in a District Court in Seattle, Washington accusing Nguyen Lam, Kyra Evans and Marc Sapatin, 3 former call center employees, for deliberately installing malware on the company's computers which enabled a Californian company to access to their Torch system.

The company in question is Swift Unlocks which is a Web portal providing phone unlocking services.

A recent increase of unlock requests were associated with former workers and their credentials raising speculation that an automated script may have been in operation that sent and processed these requests.

Suspicions became stronger as unlocked requests cropped "within milliseconds of one another" which is usually not the normal course of business.

An investigation has revealed that the presence of malware in the computers of the above ex member of staff that accepted commands from a remote server to be communicated to Torch employing the credentials of former employees to authenticate steps.

AT&T charges that during April to September 2013, the operation caused "unauthorized unlocking of a large number of phones on the wireless network of AT&T" which the carrier labeled 'falsified".

Summons was issued to the defendants on 21st September, 2015 asking them to respond to this complaint within 21 days.

CNET published news on 18th September, 2015 quoting Marty Richter, Spokesman of AT&T, as saying "The company is seeking compensation and injunctive relief and that the alleged scheme "did not entail any inappropriate access of computer information or any hostile effect on our customers."

» SPAMfighter News - 9/29/2015