Avast Blog_Security News : Top 10 Biggest Data Breaches in 2018

[jasonX]

The whole world has been plague with data breaches that it is becoming an almost constant issue to everyone. 

As defined by wikipedia, 

A data breach is the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information to an untrusted environment. Other terms for this phenomenon include unintentional information disclosure, data leak and also data spill. Incidents range from concerted attacks by black hats associated with organized crime, political activist or national governments to careless disposal of used computer equipment or data storage media and unhackable source.

Source
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_breach


Avast's Martin Hron shares us relevant information about the top 10 biggest data breaches that happened in 2018. Below are excerpts from the Avast Blog and pertinent links to more information. Read on below.

Top 10 Biggest Data Breaches in 2018

There have been many, so let’s count down some of the year’s biggest data breaches.


As we look back at the year, it’s impossible not to acknowledge the rampant data breaches that caused such chaos for what seemed to be all 52 weeks of the year. The secret and sensitive data of literally hundreds of millions of people has been torn open and exposed, then aggregated on various dark web lists for sale. Data breaches are a terrifying top trend in the cybercrime world that shows no sign of slowing any time soon.

If your info has been compromised in one of these unfortunate events, we have covered how to survive a data breach, but there are many whose recovery from a breach was a nightmarish climb back to sanity. For the morbidly curious, let’s take a closer look at our top 10 data breaches of 2018.

The interesting thing is, while some data breaches are deliberate attacks, others are simply neglected databases that security auditors find lying around the web like unguarded, unlocked safes. Our list contains some of each. In descending order, counting down some of the biggest data breaches of the year, what follows is the worst of the worst.

#10 — Panera

Number of victims: 37 million
Who was targeted: All PaneraBread.com customer accounts
What data was exposed: Names, email and physical addresses, birthdays, and the last four digits of the customers’ credit card numbers
Timeframe: Disclosed April 2018
What happened: Despite being warned by a cybersecurity expert in August 2017 that their website was leaking data, the Panera IT team failed to act until 8 months later when it announced the leak and took the site down for security maintenance.

#9 — Newegg

Number of victims: 50 million
Who was targeted: Newegg online shoppers
What data was exposed: Credit card info
Timeframe: August 14, 2018 - September 18, 2018
What happened: The online retailer was hacked by cybergang Magecart, who injected a credit card skimming code into the Newegg website. Whenever a customer bought something online, that payment info went straight to Magecart’s C&C (command and control server).

#8 — Elasticsearch

Number of victims: 82 million (57M consumers, 26M businesses)
Who was targeted: Users and online businesses across the internet
What data was exposed: From individual users — names, email and physical addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, employers, and job titles. From businesses — names, company details, zip codes, carrier routes, latitudes/longitudes, census tracts, phone numbers, web addresses, email addresses, employee count, revenue numbers, NAICS codes, SIC codes, and more.
Timeframe: Discovered November 14, 2018
What happened: This is one of those cases we mentioned above where a regular security audit led to a researcher stumbling upon over 80 million records of sensitive, aggregated data. It is unknown how long the databases were sitting unguarded and who, if anyone, has had the opportunity to copy and steal all the data. Cybersecurity experts believe they have tracked down the source of the unguarded databases to a data management company that has since closed its doors, but it is still officially unknown.

#7 —  Facebook

Number of victims: 87 million
Who was targeted: Facebook users
What data was exposed: Profile info, political beliefs, friend networks, private messages
Timeframe: Disclosed September 2018
What happened: This is the notorious Cambridge Analytica scandal where the data-collecting firm illegally harvested users’ info without their permission. The secret operation was politically motivated—namely, to influence the 2016 US presidential campaign. And though the breach occurred a couple years ago, it’s only this year that investigatory conclusions have come out, giving us a clearer picture of what happened.....

More Info HERE
https://blog.avast.com/biggest-data-breaches

Avast Blog
https://blog.avast.com/