Massive data leak: 2.7 billion records of U.S., Canada, UK residents, including Social Security numbers
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Joshua Long
Last week, a threat actor publicly leaked a 277 GB data dump containing nearly 2.7 billion records. The leak includes the full names, dates of birth, and home addresses of United States, Canada, and United Kingdom residents. And one more thing: 272 million Social Security numbers (SSNs) of U.S. citizens.
The database includes far more records than the total residents of these three countries combined. This is, in part, because the database includes a separate entry for each known address where each individual has lived.
According to a firm that analyzed the data, the average age of individuals in the database was 70. This may be in part because the database contains records for many deceased persons; 2 million records pertain to people who would be over age 120 today. Nearly everyone in the database was born before 2002 (meaning they’re currently older than 21).
Notably, some of the addresses are relatively old, possibly indicating that the data may have been extracted from an old backup.
As for the original source of the data breach, the threat actor claimed that the data came from “NPD,” meaning National Public Data. NPD is a U.S.-based data broker company that performs background checks.
While there isn’t any way to remove your information from a data dump, there are some things you can do to stay protected, such as freezing your credit. Be sure to read our article featuring 9 easy steps to take after a data leak.
What to do after a data breach—and how to avoid getting hacked—in 9 easy steps
How can I learn more?
For more details about this data breach, see BleepingComputer’s report, and Brian Krebs’ follow-up report.
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Image credit: Data Security Breach by Blogtrepreneur (CC BY 2.0)
