Hackers belonging to a group called USDoD is claiming to have stolen a massive 2.7 billion records containing personal information for people from various countries around the world, which includes their physical addresses and Social Security numbers. The organization is essentially holding the records hostage, having offered to sell them to a forum of hackers. The records have personal data for every single person who is living in the US, the UK, and even Canada. In other words, we have a serious problem on our hands.
According to a report from Fox 5 DC, the information was nabbed from National Public Data, which offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies, and others who run background checks on individuals.
A hacking group called USDoD claimed in April to have stolen personal records from National Public Data in a massive data breach. The NPD is a platform that offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks, the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a class-action lawsuit filed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
USDoD offered to sell the stolen records, which included personal data for everyone in the US, UK, and Canada, to a forum of hackers. USDoD was seeking $3.5 million for the entire database, but piles of the data have been leaked by various entities. According to Engadget, previous leaks of data included phone numbers and email addresses, but that information reportedly was not a part of the latest data release.
We’ve been seeing a rise in cyberattacks and ransom taking of this nature over the course of recent years, which has led folks to ask what they can do to protect their personal information, especially now with this latest breach. Keep an eye on your credit reports in order to see if any fraudulent activity is being carried out using your lines of credit. If you do happen to notice something fishy, contact credit bureaus like Experian and Equifax right away and notify them of it.
You can ask these bureaus to freeze their accounts — this can be done through phone or email — so that someone cannot open a new bank account in your name or take out a loan using your credit.
“It is also good to manage your passwords and to use two-factor authentication for the passwords. You should avoid using the same login information for different services and make sure to routinely change your password on your accounts,” the report concluded.