61 lakh Indian users data leaked
- Over 2 billion people use the app internationally.
- Data of about 500 mn users have been stolen.
- The hacker collected data from 84 different nations.
WhatsApp has denied the claims.
“The claim written on Cybernews is based on unsubstantiated screenshots. There is no evidence of a ‘data leak’ from WhatsApp,” said a spokesperson.
This is not the first time meta and their allies are blamed for user data breach.
Last year, information about more than 500 million users of Facebook, another Meta-owned company, was offered online for free. In 2019, data of 419 million Facebook and 49 million Instagram users were exposed. In the same year, it had faced another breach leaving data of 267 million users exposed
More than 2 billion people use the App internationally.
About 500 million users’ data was stolen. The hacker collected data from 84 different countries. They were raped and are for sale. The post, which multiple sources have confirmed as likely true, claims to sell an updated 2022 database of 487 million cell phone numbers used on WhatsApp, containing data from 84 countries.
This means that almost a quarter of the estimated two billion monthly active users are at risk.
This could be the biggest data breach of all time, the phone numbers of nearly half a billion users are being put up for sale online. According to a report by Cybernews, an actor has posted an ad on a hacker community forum claiming he is selling a 2022 database of 487 million mobile phone numbers of WhatsApp users. The database contains cell phone numbers of users from 84 different countries including the US, UK, Egypt, Italy, Saudi Arabia and even India. The information is mainly used by attackers for phishing attacks. Therefore, it is recommended that WhatsApp users do not receive calls and messages from unknown numbers.
WhatsApp Record for Sale :
Threat Actor Claims dataset contains over 32 million user records in the US. Also affected are 45 million users in Egypt, 35 million in Italy, 29 million in Saudi Arabia, 20 million in France and 20 million in Turkey. The database allegedly contains almost 10 million phone numbers of Russian citizens and more than 11 million from the UK. The report claims that the attacker bought the US dataset for $7,000 (approx. 5 71 690 rupees). While the cost for the UK and German records is USD 2,500 (approx. Rs 2,04,175) and USD 2,000 (approx. Rs 1,63,340) respectively. The report further adds that the seller’s claim is purely speculative.
Most commonly, huge data sets posted online are obtained through scraping, which is against WhatsApp’s Terms of Service. However, the seller claims that all numbers belong to active users of Meta’s own platform. However, he did not specify how he obtained the database, the vendor said it “applied its strategy” to collect the data.
How can the data be used:
Leaked phone numbers could be used for any number of reasons, including marketing and phishing.
The report said more than 32 million of the leaked records are saidexposed.from users in the US, followed by the UK (11 mn). Other nations with the most number of affected users include Egypt (45 mn), Italy (35 mn), Saudi Arabia (29 mn), France (20 mn), Turkey (20 mn), and Russia (10 mn). From India, the report added, more than 6 million WhatsApp users could be at risk.
Cybernews said it received a sample of around 2,000 numbers to verify the data breach claims and found that they belonged to WhatsApp users.
This isn’t the first time Meta and its online platforms have found itself in the middle of a data security issue.
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