The United States of America, November 28, 2022: Now in one of the biggest data breaches ever, phone numbers of nearly 500 million users have been leaked and are on sale on the dark web.
And that’s according to a report, the database on sale contains the private information of WhatsApp users from 84 countries. The hacker behind the breach claims that all numbers belong to seemingly active WhatsApp users.
As per the cyber news report, the leaked database includes phone numbers of over 32 million users from the United States of America and around 11.5 million users from the United Kingdom.
The breach, however, seems to have impacted users from Egypt, the most with 45 million users, potentially at risk. The hacker also claims to have access to 35 million phone numbers from Italy 10 million from Russia, and 6 million from India.
The hacker, however, has not shared how they got these numbers. But the report claims of scrapping could be one of the ways that technique involves harvesting data at scale and using bots.
These numbers have reportedly been put on sale for 7000 US dollars of the database ID from the United States. While the data from the United Kingdom and Germany are said to be available at 2000 US dollars.
WhatsApp is yet to make any comment on the report. This is not the first time that meta or one of its platforms has been caught in the middle of the data breach controversy.
Personal data of over 533 million Facebook users from more than 100 countries were reportedly leaked online last year. Meanwhile, cybersecurity professionals recommend users remain cautious of any calls from unknown numbers and text messages he has also advised WhatsApp users to be more careful as hackers generally use such information for smishing and vishing attacks.
These are scams where criminals try to get users to click on a fraudulent link through a phone, text, message, email, or even a voicemail, and clicking on or even responding to any such voice or text-based message can be dangerous, leading to users losing money or even critical personal data.
