We’re nearly on the finish of 2024, a 12 months that can go down as having seen a number of the largest, 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 data getting scraped, stolen and posted on-line, to reams of medical knowledge masking most individuals in the USA getting stolen, the worst knowledge breaches of 2024 have surpassed the 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 have a look at how a number of the largest safety incidents of 2024 went down, their influence 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 lots of extra non-customers
For AT&T, 2024 has been a really dangerous 12 months for knowledge safety. The telecoms big confirmed not one, however two separate knowledge breaches simply months aside.
In July, AT&T mentioned cybercriminals had stolen a cache of information that contained telephone numbers and name data 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 instantly from AT&T’s programs, however from an account it had with knowledge big 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 include 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 telephone numbers of non-customers who had been referred to as by AT&T prospects throughout that point. That knowledge changing into public may very well be harmful for higher-risk people, comparable to home abuse survivors.
That was AT&T’s second knowledge breach this 12 months. Earlier in March, a knowledge breach dealer dumped on-line a full cache of 73 million buyer data to a identified cybercrime discussion board for anybody to see, some three years after a a lot smaller pattern was teased on-line.
The revealed knowledge included prospects’ private data, together with names, telephone numbers and postal addresses, with some prospects confirming their knowledge was correct.
But it surely 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 big 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 current 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 understand how 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 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 People’ 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 results for these affected are prone to be irreversible. UnitedHealth says the stolen knowledge — which it paid the hackers to acquire a replica — consists of 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 big’s chief government, Andrew Witty, informed lawmakers that the breach could have an effect on round one-third of People, and probably 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.Okay. pathology lab Synnovis — a blood and tissue testing lab for hospitals and well being companies throughout the U.Okay. capital — triggered 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 important incident throughout the U.Okay. 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 courting again a “vital quantity” of years. Very like the info breach at Change Healthcare, the ramifications for these affected are prone to be vital and life-lasting.
A few 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 benefiting from the hack however leaving the U.Okay. 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 safety requirements as required by the U.Okay. 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 big 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 number 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 — 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 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 “vital quantity of buyer knowledge.” Solely a handful of the 165 corporations have to date confirmed their environments had been compromised, which additionally consists of 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. Count on 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 big Cencora disclosed a February knowledge breach involving the compromise of sufferers’ well being knowledge, data that Cencora obtained by means of its partnerships with drug makers. Cencora has steadfastly refused to say how many individuals are affected, however a rely by TechCrunch reveals nicely over 1,000,000 individuals have been notified to date. Cencora says it’s served greater than 18 million sufferers so far.
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 big Kaiser disclosed a knowledge breach in April after inadvertently sharing the personal well being data of 13.4 million sufferers, particularly web site search phrases about diagnoses and medicines, with tech corporations and advertisers. Kaiser mentioned 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 the same 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 private data of greater than 7.6 million individuals stolen by cybercriminals in July. Evolve is a banking-as-a-service big serving largely fintech corporations and startups, like Affirm and Mercury. Consequently, 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 Information goes broke after tens of millions of SSNs stolen
The corporate behind the info dealer Nationwide Public Information filed for Chapter 11 chapter safety in October, months after an enormous knowledge breach uncovered some three billion data affecting round 270 million people, in accordance with varied 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, telephone numbers, and Social Safety numbers (even when not all the knowledge was correct). The corporate mentioned it needed to file for chapter as it could actually not generate the income to deal with the deluge of class-action lawsuits and mounting legal responsibility from state and federal regulators.
First revealed on June 28 and up to date on October 14.
