Major Data Breaches in 2019
Alan Kitto
Thanks to our anti-virus software provider Bitdefender for the following update.
With more than 4 billion records exposed, 2019 hit a milestone in cybercrime. It’s hard to keep track of the daily flood of security and data breaches, so here we lay out some of the more significant ones that may have affected you or your family last year.
ELASTICSEARCH SERVER
What happened:
1.2 billion user records containing personal and social information from two data enrichment companies were compromised.The lack of server protection made it easy for cyber attackers to access names, email addresses, phone numbers, LinkedIn and Facebook profile information.
What happened:
More than 267 million user IDs, phone numbers and names of Facebook users were left exposed on an online database.Although no evidence of compromised Facebook accounts was found, the data may be used for SMS, phishing scams and identity theft.
eBay
What happened:
Hackers accessed encrypted passwords and non-financial data of 145 million customers through a couple of compromised employee login credentials.Leaked customer names, e-mail addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth may be used for phishing and online scams.
CAPITAL ONE
What happened:
Personal information of over 100 million of the bank’s customers and credit card applicants was compromised by exploiting a misconfigured web application firewall.The bank said it found no evidence that the data was used for fraud or shared to other parties, but it offered free credit monitoring and identity protection to affected parties.