Monstrous National Public Data Breach Affects Millions of People in US

In August, almost 2.7 billion records of personal information for people in the United States were leaked on a hacking forum, exposing names, social security numbers, all known physical addresses, and possible aliases.

The data was stolen from National Public Data, a company that collects and sells access to personal data for use in background checks, to obtain criminal records, and for private investigators.

Have I Been Pwned's Troy Hunt analyzed the breach and determined it contained 134 million unique email addresses, making this a monstrous data breach.

The threat actors behind the breach attempted to sell it for $3.5 million, but it was eventually leaked for free on a hacking forum.

(as reported in BleepingComputer's overview of biggest 2024 cybersecurity stories.)

Estimated Cost

unknown - data leaked, 134 million affected

Threat Source

Impacts

IT Privacy