We’re nearly on the finish of 2024, a 12 months that may go down as having seen a number of the greatest, most damaging knowledge breaches in current historical past. And simply once you suppose that a few of these hacks can’t get any worse, they do.
From enormous shops of shoppers’ private info getting scraped, stolen and posted on-line, to reams of medical knowledge protecting most individuals in the USA getting stolen, the worst knowledge breaches of 2024 have surpassed the 1 billion stolen information and rising. These breaches not solely have an effect on the people whose knowledge was irretrievably uncovered, but in addition 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 greatest safety incidents of 2024 went down, their impression and, in some instances, how they might have been stopped.
AT&T’s knowledge breaches have an effect on “practically all” of its prospects, and plenty of extra non-customers
For AT&T, 2024 has been a really dangerous 12 months for knowledge safety. The telecoms large confirmed not one, however two separate knowledge breaches simply months aside.
In July, AT&T stated cybercriminals had stolen a cache of knowledge that contained cellphone numbers and name information of “practically all” of its prospects, or round 110 million individuals, over a six-month interval in 2022 and in some instances longer. The info wasn’t stolen straight from AT&T’s programs, however from an account it had with knowledge large Snowflake (extra on that later).
Though the stolen AT&T knowledge isn’t public (and one report suggests AT&T paid a ransom for the hackers to delete the stolen knowledge) and the info itself doesn’t comprise the contents of calls or textual content messages, the “metadata” nonetheless reveals who referred to as who and when, and in some instances the info can be utilized to deduce approximate areas. Worse, the info consists of cellphone numbers of non-customers who had been referred to as by AT&T prospects throughout that point. That knowledge turning into public might be harmful for higher-risk people, reminiscent of home abuse survivors.
That was AT&T’s second knowledge breach this 12 months. Earlier in March, an information breach dealer dumped on-line a full cache of 73 million buyer information to a identified cybercrime discussion board for anybody to see, some three years after a a lot smaller pattern was teased on-line.
The printed knowledge included prospects’ private info, together with names, cellphone numbers and postal addresses, with some prospects confirming their knowledge was correct.
Nevertheless 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 instructed TechCrunch on the time that the encrypted passcodes might be simply unscrambled, placing some 7.6 million current AT&T buyer accounts vulnerable 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 info 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 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 Individuals’ medical 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 important programs was not protected with multi-factor authentication.
The prolonged downtime attributable to the cyberattack dragged on for weeks, inflicting widespread outages at hospitals, pharmacies and healthcare practices throughout the USA. However the aftermath of the info breach has but to be totally realized, although the implications for these affected are prone to be irreversible. UnitedHealth says the stolen knowledge — which it paid the hackers to acquire a duplicate — consists of the non-public, medical and billing info 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, instructed lawmakers that the breach might 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 lot 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 1000’s of operations and procedures following the hack, prompting the declaration of a important incident throughout the U.Ok. well being sector.
A Russia-based ransomware gang was blamed for the cyberattack, which noticed the theft of knowledge associated to some 300 million affected person interactions courting again a “important quantity” of years. Very similar to the info breach at Change Healthcare, the ramifications for these affected are prone to be important and life-lasting.
A number of the knowledge was already printed 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 information on-line.
One of many NHS trusts that runs 5 hospitals throughout London affected by the outages reportedly failed to fulfill the info 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 information stolen within the Snowflake hack
A sequence of knowledge thefts from cloud knowledge large Snowflake shortly snowballed into one of many greatest breaches of the 12 months, because of the huge quantities of knowledge stolen from its company prospects.
Cybercriminals swiped a whole lot of tens of millions of buyer knowledge from a number of the world’s greatest firms — together with an alleged 560 million information from Ticketmaster, 79 million information from Advance Auto Components and some 30 million information from TEG — through the use of stolen credentials of knowledge 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 characteristic, which protects in opposition to intrusions that depend on stolen or reused passwords.
Incident response agency Mandiant stated 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 firms have thus far confirmed their environments had been compromised, which additionally consists of tens of 1000’s of worker information from Neiman Marcus and Santander Financial institution, and tens of millions of information of scholars at Los Angeles Unified Faculty District. Anticipate many Snowflake prospects to return ahead.
(Dis)honorable mentions
Cencora notifies over 1,000,000 and counting that it misplaced their knowledge:
U.S. pharma large Cencora disclosed a February knowledge breach involving the compromise of sufferers’ well being knowledge, info that Cencora obtained by its partnerships with drug makers. Cencora has steadfastly refused to say how many individuals are affected, however a rely by TechCrunch exhibits nicely over 1,000,000 individuals have been notified thus far. Cencora says it’s served greater than 18 million sufferers up to now.
MediSecure knowledge breach impacts half of Australia:
Near 13 million individuals in Australia — roughly half of the nation’s inhabitants — had private and well being knowledge stolen in a ransomware assault on prescriptions supplier MediSecure in April. MediSecure, which distributed prescriptions for many Australians till late 2023, declared insolvency quickly after the mass theft of buyer knowledge.
Kaiser shared well being knowledge on tens of millions of sufferers with advertisers:
U.S. medical insurance large Kaiser disclosed an information breach in April after inadvertently sharing the non-public well being info of 13.4 million sufferers, particularly web site search phrases about diagnoses and drugs, with tech firms and advertisers. Kaiser stated it used their monitoring code for web site analytics. The medical insurance supplier disclosed the incident within the wake of a number of different telehealth startups, like Cerebral, Monument and Tempest, admitting they too shared knowledge with advertisers.
USPS shared postal tackle with tech giants, too:
After which it was the flip of the U.S. Postal Service caught sharing postal addresses of logged-in customers with advertisers like Meta, LinkedIn and Snap, utilizing an analogous monitoring code offered by the businesses. USPS eliminated the monitoring code from its web site after TechCrunch notified the postal service in July of the improper knowledge sharing, however the company wouldn’t say what number of people had knowledge collected. USPS has over 62 million Knowledgeable Supply customers as of March 2024.
Evolve Financial institution knowledge breach affected fintech and startup prospects:
A ransomware assault concentrating on Evolve Financial institution noticed the non-public info of greater than 7.6 million individuals stolen by cybercriminals in July. Evolve is a banking-as-a-service large serving largely fintech firms and startups, like Affirm and Mercury. In consequence, most of the people notified of the info breach had by no means heard of Evolve Financial institution, not to mention have a relationship with the agency, previous to its cyberattack.
Nationwide Public Knowledge goes broke after tens of millions of SSNs stolen
The corporate behind the info dealer Nationwide Public Knowledge filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety in October, months after a large knowledge breach uncovered some three billion information affecting round 270 million people, in keeping with numerous analyses by safety researchers. The info dealer allowed its paying prospects entry to its huge databases of names, dates of beginning, e mail and postal addresses, cellphone numbers, and Social Safety numbers (even when not all the knowledge was correct). The corporate stated it needed to file for chapter as it might not generate the income to handle the deluge of class-action lawsuits and mounting legal responsibility from state and federal regulators.
First printed on June 28 and up to date on October 14.
