We’re over midway by 2024, and already this 12 months we’ve got seen a few of the largest, most damaging knowledge breaches in latest historical past. And simply whenever you suppose that a few of these hacks can’t get any worse, they do.
From large shops of consumers’ private data getting scraped, stolen and posted on-line, to reams of medical knowledge overlaying most individuals in the USA getting stolen, the worst knowledge breaches of 2024 thus far have already surpassed at the least 1 billion stolen data and rising. These breaches not solely have an effect on the people whose knowledge was irretrievably uncovered, but additionally embolden the criminals who revenue from their malicious cyberattacks.
Journey with us to the not-so-distant previous to take a look at how a few of the largest safety incidents of 2024 went down, their influence, and in some instances, how they might have been stopped.
Thriller AT&T knowledge leak uncovered 73 million buyer accounts
Some three years after a hacker teased a broadcast pattern of allegedly stolen AT&T buyer knowledge, a knowledge breach dealer in March dumped the total cache of 73 million buyer data on-line to a identified cybercrime discussion board for anybody to see. The revealed knowledge included prospects’ private data, together with names, cellphone numbers and postal addresses, with some prospects confirming their knowledge was correct.
However it wasn’t till a safety researcher found that the uncovered knowledge contained encrypted passcodes used for accessing a buyer’s AT&T account that the telecoms large took motion. The safety researcher informed TechCrunch on the time that the encrypted passcodes may very well be simply unscrambled, placing some 7.6 million present AT&T buyer accounts liable to hijacks. AT&T force-reset its prospects’ account passcodes after TechCrunch alerted the corporate to the researcher’s findings.
One large thriller stays: AT&T nonetheless doesn’t know the way the information leaked or the place it got here from.
Change Healthcare hackers stole medical knowledge on “substantial proportion” of individuals in America
In 2022, the U.S. Justice Division sued medical health insurance large UnitedHealth Group to dam its tried acquisition of well being tech large Change Healthcare, fearing that the deal would give the healthcare conglomerate broad entry to about “half of all People’ medical health insurance claims” annually. The bid to dam the deal in the end failed. Then, two years later, one thing far worse occurred: Change Healthcare was hacked by a prolific ransomware gang; its almighty banks of delicate well being knowledge had been stolen as a result of one of many firm’s vital techniques was not protected with multi-factor authentication.
The prolonged downtime brought on by the cyberattack dragged on for weeks, inflicting widespread outages at hospitals, pharmacies and healthcare practices throughout the USA. However the aftermath of the information breach has but to be absolutely realized, although the results for these affected are more likely to be irreversible. UnitedHealth says the stolen knowledge — which it paid the hackers to acquire a replica — contains the private, medical and billing data on a “substantial proportion” of individuals in the USA.
UnitedHealth has but to connect a quantity to what number of people had been affected by the breach. The well being large’s chief govt, Andrew Witty, informed lawmakers that the breach might have an effect on round one-third of People, and doubtlessly extra. For now, it’s a query of simply what number of tons of of tens of millions of individuals within the U.S. are affected.
Synnovis ransomware assault sparked widespread outages at hospitals throughout London
A June cyberattack on U.Ok. pathology lab Synnovis — a blood and tissue testing lab for hospitals and well being providers throughout the U.Ok. capital — prompted ongoing widespread disruption to affected person providers for weeks. The native Nationwide Well being Service trusts that depend on the lab postponed hundreds of operations and procedures following the hack, prompting the declaration of a vital incident throughout the U.Ok. well being sector.
A Russia-based ransomware gang was blamed for the cyberattack, which noticed the theft of information associated to some 300 million affected person interactions relationship again a “important quantity” of years. Very similar to the information breach at Change Healthcare, the ramifications for these affected are more likely to be important and life-lasting.
A number of the knowledge was already revealed on-line in an effort to extort the lab into paying a ransom. Synnovis reportedly refused to pay the hackers’ $50 million ransom, stopping the gang from cashing in on the hack however leaving the U.Ok. authorities scrambling for a plan in case the hackers posted tens of millions of well being data on-line.
One of many NHS trusts that runs 5 hospitals throughout London affected by the outages reportedly failed to satisfy the information safety requirements as required by the U.Ok. well being service within the years that ran as much as the June cyberattack on Synnovis.
Ticketmaster had an alleged 560 million data stolen within the Snowflake hack
A collection of information thefts from cloud knowledge large Snowflake shortly snowballed into one of many largest breaches of the 12 months, due to the huge quantities of information stolen from its company prospects.
Cybercriminals swiped tons of of tens of millions of buyer knowledge from a few of the world’s largest corporations — together with an alleged 560 million data from Ticketmaster, 79 million data from Advance Auto Components and some 30 million data from TEG — through the use of stolen credentials of information engineers with entry to their employer’s Snowflake environments. For its half, Snowflake doesn’t require (or implement) its prospects to make use of the safety function, which protects in opposition to intrusions that depend on stolen or reused passwords.
Incident response agency Mandiant mentioned round 165 Snowflake prospects had knowledge stolen from their accounts, in some instances a “important quantity of buyer knowledge.” Solely a handful of the 165 corporations have up to now confirmed their environments had been compromised, which additionally contains tens of hundreds of worker data from Neiman Marcus and Santander Financial institution, and tens of millions of data of scholars at Los Angeles Unified College District. Anticipate many Snowflake prospects to come back ahead.
