Home Just In Over 5 billion data records have already been leaked in 2021

Over 5 billion data records have already been leaked in 2021

by CIO AXIS

Over 5 billion data records have already been leaked in 2021, according to the recent Atlas VPN findings. One of the reasons for such a high number is the Compilation of Many Breaches (COMB) which compromised about 3.27 billion data records alone. COMB is made up of email and password combinations that have already been leaked before. It includes major sites such as Netflix and LinkedIn.

Cybercriminals were the most active in January as it had the highest number of total breaches — 23. Cyberattacks hit companies such as Facebook, Raychat, Serasa, and much more. In total more than 1.4 billion personal records were leaked in these attacks.

The worst month in records lost so far this year was February due to the vast COMB breach. Besides that, two more huge cyberattacks in Brazil affected two mobile operator companies Vivo and Claro. Overall in February, there were 12 breaches and 3.4 billion personal records were leaked which is more than half compared to the total amount.

March has been the quietest month in terms of cyberattacks. Only 7 breaches exposing 153 million personal records took place in March. The most notable one happened in India, where private information of nearly 100 million users of the Indian mobile payment startup MobiKwik was leaked on the dark web.

The second significant breach this year came from Facebook. A total of 533 million users were affected, which is about one-fifth of the entire social network’s user pool. Hackers published phone numbers and account details on a publicly accessible cybercrime forum.

Another impactful breach happened to a popular Iranian business and social messenger — Raychat. The breach exposed its entire database of 267 million accounts with names, emails, passwords, metadata, and encrypted chats. A bot attack then destroyed it. Luckily, the company had its user’s data backed up in this case, and it was restored after.

The largest personal data leakage in Brazilian history happened in January, affecting 220 million people. Also worth mentioning is more than 200 million record leaks of Chinese citizens. Researchers from Cyble, a cybercrime monitoring company, discovered this exposed data for sale on the dark web.

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