We’re over midway via 2024, and already this yr we now have seen a number of the largest, most damaging data breaches in latest historical past. And simply once you suppose that a few of these hacks can’t get any worse, they do.
From enormous shops of consumers’ private info getting scraped, stolen and posted on-line, to reams of medical information overlaying most individuals in the US getting stolen, the worst data breaches of 2024 so far have already surpassed a minimum of 1 billion stolen data and rising. These breaches not solely have an effect on the people whose information was irretrievably uncovered, but additionally embolden the criminals who revenue from their malicious cyberattacks.
Journey with us to the not-so-distant previous to have a look at how a number of the largest security incidents of 2024 went down, their influence, and in some circumstances, how they might have been stopped.
Thriller AT&T information leak uncovered 73 million buyer accounts
Some three years after a hacker teased a broadcast pattern of allegedly stolen AT&T buyer information, a data 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 information included prospects’ private info, together with names, telephone numbers and postal addresses, with some prospects confirming their information was correct.
Nevertheless it wasn’t till a security researcher found that the uncovered information contained encrypted passcodes used for accessing a buyer’s AT&T account that the telecoms big took motion. The security researcher instructed information.killnetswitch on the time that the encrypted passcodes might be simply unscrambled, placing some 7.6 million present AT&T buyer accounts susceptible to hijacks. AT&T force-reset its prospects’ account passcodes after information.killnetswitch alerted the corporate to the researcher’s findings.
One large thriller stays: AT&T nonetheless doesn’t understand how the info leaked or the place it got here from.
Change Healthcare hackers stole medical information on “substantial proportion” of individuals in America
In 2022, the U.S. Justice Division sued medical health insurance big UnitedHealth Group to dam its tried acquisition of well being tech big Change Healthcare, fearing that the deal would give the healthcare conglomerate broad entry to about “half of all Individuals’ medical health insurance claims” every year. The bid to dam the deal finally 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 information have been stolen as a result of one of many firm’s vital methods 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 US. However the aftermath of the data breach has but to be absolutely realized, although the results for these affected are prone to be irreversible. UnitedHealth says the stolen information — which it paid the hackers to acquire a duplicate — contains the private, medical and billing info on a “substantial proportion” of individuals in the US.
UnitedHealth has but to connect a quantity to what number of people have been affected by the breach. The well being big’s chief govt, Andrew Witty, instructed lawmakers that the breach could have an effect on round one-third of Individuals, and doubtlessly extra. For now, it’s a query of simply what number of a whole bunch 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 companies throughout the U.Ok. capital — brought about ongoing widespread disruption to affected person companies 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 “vital quantity” of years. Very similar to the data breach at Change Healthcare, the ramifications for these affected are prone to be vital and life-lasting.
A few of the information 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 taking advantage of 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 fulfill the info security 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 sequence of information thefts from cloud information big Snowflake rapidly snowballed into one of many largest breaches of the yr, because of the huge quantities of information stolen from its company prospects.
Cybercriminals swiped a whole bunch of tens of millions of buyer information from a number of the world’s largest firms — together with an alleged 560 million data from Ticketmaster, 79 million data from Advance Auto Components and a few 30 million data from TEG — by utilizing 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 security function, which protects in opposition to intrusions that depend on stolen or reused passwords.
Incident response agency Mandiant stated round 165 Snowflake prospects had information stolen from their accounts, in some circumstances a “vital quantity of buyer information.” Solely a handful of the 165 firms have to this point confirmed their environments have 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 Faculty District. Count on many Snowflake prospects to return ahead.
