Alarming Data Breach

Hackers May Have Stolen Every American’s Social Security Numbers in ‘Five-Alarm Wake-Up Call’

A vicious gang of hack­ers might have stolen every Amer­i­can’s Social Secu­ri­ty num­ber in a mas­sive theft of per­son­al infor­ma­tion from a large data bro­ker, which experts are call­ing ‘a five-alarm wake-up call.’

Implications of the Breach

Widespread Identity Theft and Fraud Feared After Sensitive Data Disseminated

Now that this sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion — includ­ing Social Secu­ri­ty num­bers — has been dis­sem­i­nat­ed, it is pos­si­ble it will give rise to ram­pant iden­ti­ty theft, fraud, and var­i­ous oth­er crimes.

“If this in fact is pret­ty much the whole dossier on all of us, it cer­tain­ly is much more con­cern­ing [than pre­vi­ous breach­es],” said cyber­se­cu­ri­ty expert Tere­sa Murray.

Call to Action

Experts Urge Immediate Precautions to Protect Personal Information

“If peo­ple weren’t tak­ing pre­cau­tions in the past, which they should have been doing, this should be a five-alarm wake-up call for them,” Mur­ray continued. 

Experts advise Amer­i­cans to take imme­di­ate steps to safe­guard their per­son­al data and mon­i­tor for any sus­pi­cious activity.

Hacking Incident Details

Notorious Hacker Group Claims Responsibility for Stealing 2.9 Billion Records

In April, a noto­ri­ous gang of hack­ers known as the USDoD took cred­it for the theft of sen­si­tive per­son­al records of 2.9 bil­lion peo­ple from Nation­al Pub­lic Data, a com­pa­ny that often pro­vides per­son­al infor­ma­tion to employ­ers, staffing agen­cies, and pri­vate investigators.

Scope of the Breach

Hackers Claim to Have Obtained a Database Containing 2.7 Billion Records

Accord­ing to a post on X.com by a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty expert, the group claimed that they were sell­ing the 4 TB data­base for $3.5 million. 

The hack­er went on to claim that the data­base con­tained about 2.7 bil­lion records, which came fur­nished with a per­son­’s full name, date of birth, address, and Social Secu­ri­ty number.

Response from Data Broker

National Public Data Purges Entire Database to Protect Sensitive Information

News out­lets cen­tered around cyber­se­cu­ri­ty have since viewed sec­tions of the data the hack­ers made avail­able, and experts con­firmed the data appeared to be genuine.

In response, Nation­al Pub­lic Data has report­ed­ly informed affect­ed indi­vid­u­als that they have “purged the entire data­base, as a whole, of any and all entries, essen­tial­ly opt­ing every­one out.”