In the past, a data breach affecting a few million individuals would have made the headlines. Now, data breaches that affect billions of consumers have become a common incident. Here’s a list of the biggest data breaches of the 21st century.
This is a list of the biggest data breaches according to the number of consumers whose information was compromised. Don't be one of these companies. Secure the help of an IT expert so you can develop a disaster recovery and data backup plan.
Biggest Data Breaches
Adobe
Back in October 2013, Brian Krebs, a security blogger reported a data breach involving almost 3 million credit card records and the login information of an unspecified number of user accounts. One month after, Adobe increased that estimate to 38 million active users whose IDs and encrypted passwords have been compromised.
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Adult Friend Finder
In October 2016, about 412.2 million Adult Friend Finder accounts were compromised. The stolen information spanned 20 years on six databases and they included data such as names, passwords, and email addresses.
Canva
In May 2019, 137 million user accounts have been compromised when the Australian graphic design tool website suffered a cyberattack. The names, usernames, residence, and hashed and salted with bcrypt passwords were compromised. According to Canva, the cybercriminals were able to view but not steal the files of the clients which included payment data and partial credit card information.
eBay
eBay also suffered an attack back in May 2014 and about 145 million users including addresses, dates of birth, names, and encrypted passwords. The hackers used the data of three employees to access the company’s network and had access for about 229 days.
Equifax
Equifax is one of the biggest US credit bureaus. In Sept 2017, an application flaw in one of their websites resulted into a data breach, which involved around 147.9 million clients. The personal information such as addresses, birth dates, as well as the social security numbers of 143 million clients were compromised.
Dubsmash
In December 2018, Dubsmash, which is a New York-based video messaging service, suffered an attack that compromised the usernames, email addresses, and other personal information of 162 million users. The stolen information were sold as a part of a collective dump which also included the likes of MyHeritage, Armor Games, MyFitnessPal, and ShareThis.
Heartland Payment Systems
In March 2008, about 134 million credit cards were exposed. At that time, Heartland was processing about 100 million credit card payment transactions every month for 175,000 small to medium sized retailers. The cyberattack was discovered in January 2009 when MasterCard and Visa notified Heartland of unauthorized transactions from accounts that it managed to process. The cybercriminals exploited a flaw that allowed them to carry out an SQL injection attack.
LinkedIn has become a great option for cyberattackers who are looking to carry out social engineering attacks. In 2012, 6.5 million passwords were stolen and was posted on a Russian hacker forum. But it was only until 2016, when the full extent of the data breach was revealed.
You don’t have to be a huge organization to be at risk of a cyberattack. Hackers also target small and medium sized companies. Call SpartanTec, Inc. now and let our IT security professionals help protect your business against cybersecurity breach.
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