--- title: "Charter Communications contact-data incident" description: "Evidence-backed account of Charter Communications contact-data incident, covering what happened, impact, timeline, attack vector, technical details, and primary sources." incident_type: "Data incident" status: "active" last_modified: "2026-08-09" canonical_url: "https://www.ally.security/incidents/charter-communications-contact-data-incident-2026" markdown_url: "https://www.ally.security/incidents/charter-communications-contact-data-incident-2026.md" stix_url: "https://www.ally.security/incidents/charter-communications-contact-data-incident-2026/stix.json" --- # Charter Communications contact-data incident Charter Communications acknowledged recent unauthorized activity and a related data-exfiltration incident. A verified HIBP corpus containing contact records and an employee-directory subset associated with the incident. Last modified Aug 9, 2026 · 2 sources ## Summary - **Environment:** Consumer brand through which Charter serves residential and business customers; not a separately asserted system intrusion. - **Operational impact:** No outage or recovery duration quantified - **Financial impact:** No public cost estimate ## What happened [Charter Communications](https://corporate.charter.com/) acknowledged recent unauthorized activity and a related data-exfiltration incident. [2](#source-2) ## Impact A verified HIBP corpus containing contact records and an employee-directory subset associated with the incident. [1](#source-1) Documented data types include: - Names — Names listed for the HIBP corpus; not classified by Charter as sensitive personal information. [1](#source-1) - Employment information — Job titles listed for an approximately 85,000-record internal employee-directory subset in HIBP's description. [1](#source-1) - Contact information — Email addresses, phone numbers, and physical addresses listed for the HIBP corpus; not classified by Charter as sensitive PI or CPNI. [1](#source-1) A cited record reports 4,851,517 records (Unique email addresses represented in the HIBP corpus; not a Charter-confirmed number of customers, employees, accounts, or affected individuals; as of 2026-05-28). [1](#source-1) A cited record reports 85,000 records (Approximate HIBP-described subset originating from an internal employee directory; not a Charter-confirmed employee count). [1](#source-1) HIBP reported that the associated data was published publicly after the incident. [1](#source-1) Charter said no sensitive personal information or customer proprietary network information was exfiltrated as a result of the recent activity. [2](#source-2) ## Timeline ### May 23, 2026 — Documented event HIBP BreachDate; Charter's statement confirms recent activity but does not establish this as an exact intrusion, detection, or containment date. [1](#source-1) ### May 26, 2026 — Public disclosure Date BleepingComputer published Charter's direct statement. [2](#source-2) ### August 9, 2026 — Briefing updated This briefing was last reviewed and updated on August 9, 2026. ## Threat Group & Attack Vector The cited public record does not establish a specific initial-access vector, malware family, exploited vulnerability, or ATT\&CK technique. ### Actors - No threat actor group has been identified in the reviewed public evidence. ### TTPs - No specific MITRE ATT\&CK technique is currently mapped for this case. ## Response Charter said it was aware of the situation and was following its security protocols. Charter said it was in the process of alerting appropriate authorities. No access path, attribution, scale, or recovery detail is inferred beyond the cited claims. [2](#source-2) ## Assets [Download the case-scoped STIX 2.1 bundle]() ## Sources Primary source records used to research this incident. ### Charter breach record advisory · Have I Been Pwned · May 28, 2026 ### Charter confirms data breach after ShinyHunters extortion threat news · BleepingComputer · May 26, 2026
Evidence ledger Review the supporting structured claims. 1. **Disclosed At · 100% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: 2026-05-26 2. **Exposed Data Category · 95% confidence · current** Charter customer, business, and employee contact-data corpus: Names 3. **Resulted In · 90% confidence · current** Charter customer, business, and employee contact-data corpus: HIBP reported that the associated data was published publicly after the incident. 4. **Exposed Data Category · 90% confidence · current** Charter customer, business, and employee contact-data corpus: Employment information 5. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: Charter authority notification 6. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: Charter said no sensitive personal information or customer proprietary network information was exfiltrated as a result of the recent activity. 7. **Exposed Record Count · 100% confidence · current** Charter customer, business, and employee contact-data corpus: 4,851,517 record 8. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: Charter said it was aware of the situation and was following its security protocols. 9. **Exposed Data Category · 95% confidence · current** Charter customer, business, and employee contact-data corpus: Contact information 10. **Exposed Record Count · 90% confidence · current** Charter customer, business, and employee contact-data corpus: 85,000 record 11. **Occurred At · 80% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: 2026-05-23 12. **Resulted In · 100% confidence · current** Charter authority notification: Charter said it was in the process of alerting appropriate authorities. 13. **Resulted In · 95% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: Charter customer, business, and employee contact-data corpus 14. **Affected Organization · 95% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: Spectrum 15. **Affected Organization · 100% confidence · current** May 2026 Charter Communications data breach: Charter Communications, Inc.