Documents from a lawsuit revealed that over 2.9 billion records are vulnerable after a massive hack of the Florida-based National Public Data network.
National Public Data performs background checks and confirms the hack on its website. Documents allege a hacking group gained access to National Public Data’s network, stole unencrypted information, and released most of that data on the dark web.
Steve Grobman, Chief Technology Officer at McAfee, believes this may be one of the worst data breaches ever.
“We know that National Public Data had a large breach earlier this year, and what really makes this one stand out is the quantity of the data. It was close to 3 billion records. And that’s an astounding number. If you put that in contrast to the number of people who live in the United States, there’s only 330 million people living in the US, so 3 billion records related to personal information, previous places of work, or residence, sensitive personal data like social security numbers—it’s really an astounding data leak,” said Grobman.
The information that was stolen includes Social Security numbers, home addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth.
“What makes this breach a little bit different is some of the data is also about relationships. So who are your family members? Who are people that you’ve worked with? And this makes consumers susceptible to all sorts of other types of attacks,” said Grobman.
The advancement and use of artificial intelligence make this even more worrisome.
“Things where a cybercriminal can use this data to help impersonate a loved one. So you might now get a call that’s actually generated with AI from somebody claiming to be a relative asking for money. And the cybercriminals can use this type of data to really figure out who is related to who and put these scams together,” said Grobman.
“The exact same thing is true for work. So because it’s such a massive data dump with things, including where people work and have previously worked, you can get an email from what comes across as a former colleague saying that they’re on hard times asking for money or asking for you to be a reference for a job but the reference company needs additional information. So it’s all of these different scenarios that consumers need to be on their guard,” he added.
While it’s unclear at this point exactly how many Americans were impacted, cybersecurity experts believe it’s possible millions of social security numbers could have been leaked.
Grobman urges people to start monitoring their credit, financial history, and transactions now.
“Just having that constant vigilance of always having those good digital street smarts. Taking advantage of the best technology that’s available, including things like dark web monitoring. So signing up for services that monitor if your information has been leaked to the dark web where it can be used by cybercriminals for some of these different attacks,” said Grobman.
Besides using a service to monitor your personal information online, experts stress the importance of tightening up your online security.
Use multi-factor authentication, change your passwords as an extra precaution, and use different passwords for different websites.
“When a password is part of a data breach, what the cybercriminals will do is they’ll try that email password combination on all sorts of other sites. So if you’re sharing passwords between different sites, you need to stop doing that,” said Grobman.
Although this information was recently leaked, cybercriminals may not use it for a while. Experts recommend staying vigilant in the coming months as the full scale of the hack becomes clear.
According to USA.gov, if you suspect your personal information or identity was stolen, placing a credit freeze can help protect against fraud.
For more information on how to place a security freeze on your credit report, click here
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