According to a new lawsuit filed by one of the victims, hackers accessed personal data, including Social Security numbers, putting millions of Americans at risk.
Hacker on screen with binary code. (Shutterstock/adike)
On April 8, a group of hackers known as the US Department of Defense posted a database titled “National Public Data” on a dark web forum, claiming it contained the personal data of around 3 billion people. According to From an article in Bloomberg Law.
The group has set a price of $3.5 million for the trove of information, which Bloomberg reports would make the scale of the breach comparable to the infamous 2013 Yahoo! hack, in which the data of around 3 billion users was exposed.
The stolen data includes Social Security numbers, names and addresses going back decades.
One victim also claims the data included details of family members, some of whom had died nearly 20 years ago. National Public Data did not immediately respond to a request for comment, leaving millions of Americans uninformed about the fate of their personal information, the complaint filed with Congress said. U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.
According to the media, the plaintiff, California resident Christopher Hoffman, was notified by an identity theft protection service on July 24 that his personal information had been compromised in a breach and leaked onto the dark web. According to the media report, Hoffman is suing National Public Data Co. for negligence, alleging that the company failed to adequately protect the personally identifiable information (PII) it collected. (Related: Iranian cyberattacks confirmed to have targeted accounts linked to Trump, Biden and Google)
The breach raises serious concerns about the security measures employed by companies that handle sensitive personal information. Despite the increasing frequency of cyber attacks and data breaches, many organizations still fail to implement adequate security measures. The complaint suggests that National Public Data collected personal information from undisclosed sources without the knowledge or consent of the affected individuals, further raising concerns about data privacy.
Hoffman's Litigation It seeks financial relief and a series of measures to ensure the future security of personal data, including requirements for national public data to be segmented, for regular database scans to be conducted, for the implementation of a threat management program, and for a third-party assessor to conduct annual evaluations of the cybersecurity framework for the next 10 years.
This breach highlights the importance of cybersecurity in today's digital age. As more companies collect and store vast amounts of personal data, the risk that such information will fall into the wrong hands increases exponentially. The impact of this breach could be far-reaching, putting millions of Americans at risk for identity theft and other cybercrimes.
