The revelation of a massive data breach by the USDoD, potentially impacting up to 2.9 billion individuals worldwide, has raised serious concerns about the security and fairness of the upcoming presidential election in November.
The stolen information, including a vast number of Social Security numbers and other sensitive personal data, was reportedly released for free on an online marketplace after being taken from National Public Data (NPD), a major data broker.
This disturbing development was brought to light in a lawsuit filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where it was revealed that USDoD had previously attempted to sell the stolen personal data for $3.5 million.
The LA Times reported:
According to a class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the hacking group USDoD claimed in April to have stolen personal records of 2.9 billion people from National Public Data, which offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks.
The group offered in a forum for hackers to sell the data, which included records from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, for $3.5 million, a cybersecurity expert said in a post on X.
Last week, a purported member of USDoD identified only as Felice told the hacking forum that they were offering “the full NPD database,” according to a screenshot taken by BleepingComputer. The information consists of about 2.7 billion records, each of which includes a person’s full name, address, date of birth, Social Security number and phone number, along with alternate names and birth dates, Felice claimed.
Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Information Research Group told the LA Times in an interview that if USDoD is telling the truth, this hack is much more severe than previous ones affecting Americans.
“If this in fact is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning,” Murray said. “And 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.”
NPD has not yet officially informed individuals about the suspected breach.
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