National Public Data Breach: 2.7bn Records Leaked on Dark Web

In August, a hacker dumped 2.7 billion data records, including social security numbers, on a dark web forum, in one of the biggest breaches in history.The data may have been stolen from background-checking service National Public Data at least four months ago. Each record has a person’s name, mailing address, and SSN, but some also contain other sensitive information, such as names of relatives, according to Bloomberg.How the data was stolenThis breach is related to an incident from April 8, when a known cyber-criminal group named USDoD claimed to have access to the personal data of 2.9 billion people from the U.S., U.K., and Canada and was selling the information for $3.5 million, according to a class action complaint. USDoD is thought to have obtained the database from another threat actor using the alias “SXUL.”This data was supposedly stolen from National Public Data, also known as Jerico Pictures, and the criminal claimed it contained records for every person in the three countrie...