Data Breach Report: October 2024 Edition

October 2024 was a month riddled with data breaches, exposing millions of people’s personal and financial information. From financial institutions like Fidelity Investments (77,000 customers) to healthcare providers (Star Health Insurance – 31 million customers) and even a virtual real estate platform (Earth 2 – 420,000 users), no industry was immune.

October 09, 2024, Fidelity Investments in a filing with Maine’s attorney general declares that they experienced a data breach that exposed the sensitive personal and financial information of over 77,000 customers.

The breach occurred between August 17-19, 2024, when a third party gained unauthorized access to customer accounts and obtained information such as names, Social Security numbers, financial account information, and driver’s license information.

Scale of the Breach: Over 77,000 customers were affected by the breach.
Type of Data Exposed: Names, Social Security numbers, and driver’s license information were among the data exposed. Financial account information was also compromised in the breach.
Cause of the Breach: The breach was caused by a third party gaining unauthorized access to customer accounts.

Filing with Maine’s attorney general: https://www.maine.gov/agviewer/content/ag/985235c7-cb95-4be2-8792-a1252b4f8318/a4103ed8-3176-4ca0-99e6-4a320f1c3b32.html?7194ef805fa2d04b0f7e8c9521f97343

Star Health Insurance experienced a major data breach in October 2024, compromising the personal and medical information of over 31 million customers. On September 20, 2024, the hacker “xenZen” had posted an offer to sell 7TB of customer data stolen from Star Health Insurance.

Scale of the Breach: 7TB of customer data with over 31 million customers impacted by the breach.
Type of Data Exposed: The breach exposed a significant amount of sensitive personal (Names, PAN numbers, mobile numbers, email addresses, and birthdates) and medical information.
Cause of the Breach: The breach was caused by a targeted malicious cyberattack, leading to unauthorized access to sensitive data.

The breach sparked widespread concern and outrage, with customers questioning the company’s security practices. Star Health initially denied any wrongdoing but later acknowledged the breach and launched an investigation.

In October 2024, the Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library, experienced a significant data breach. The breach exposed the personal information of approximately 31 million users.

Scale of the Breach: The breach impacted approximately 31 million users, affecting their privacy and security.
Type of Data Exposed: The exposed data included email addresses, usernames, and hashed passwords. While the passwords were hashed, the breach still posed a significant risk to user security.
Cause of the Breach: The exact cause of the breach is still under investigation as the Internet Archive has acknowledged the breach. However, it is believed that the threat actor exploited vulnerabilities in the Internet Archive’s systems to gain unauthorized access.

In October 2024, a popular fashion retailer Hot Topic suffered a data breach that exposed 57 million unique email addresses. The impacted data also included physical addresses, phone numbers, purchases, genders, dates of birth and partial credit data containing card type, expiry and last 4 digits.

Scale of the Breach: The breach impacted approximately 57 million unique email addresses and the personal information of roughly 25 million customers.
Type of Data Exposed: The leaked information includes names, addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, partial credit card data, and other account details.
Cause of the Breach: The exact cause of the breach is still under investigation. However, it is believed that the threat actor exploited vulnerabilities in Hot Topic’s systems to gain unauthorized access.

In October 2024, a data breach at Earth 2, a virtual real estate platform, exposed the email addresses of over 420,000 users. The breach occurred due to the way Gravatar, an avatar hosting service, was integrated into Earth 2. Gravatar links were embedded within the platform, revealing user email addresses associated with their Gravatar accounts.

Scale of the Breach: Over 420,000 users were potentially impacted by the exposure of their email addresses.
Type of Data Exposed: The primary data exposed was the email addresses of users linked to their Gravatar accounts.
Cause of the Breach: The integration of Gravatar into the Earth 2 platform, without proper security measures, led to the exposure of user email addresses. This was a technical oversight rather than a malicious attack.

In October 2024, almost 20GB of data containing 1.3M unique email addresses from motorcycle supplies store Dennis Kirk was circulated. Dating back to September 2021, the data also contained purchases from the online store along with customer names, phone numbers and postcodes.

Scale of the Breach: Approximately 20GB of sensitive customer data was exposed which affected over 1.3 million unique email addresses were compromised.
Type of Data Exposed: Customer names, phone numbers, and postal addresses were exposed as well as details of purchases made from the online store were leaked.
Cause of the Breach: The exact cause of the breach remains unclear.

000webhost, a free web hosting provider, suffered a significant data breach that exposed the personal information of over 13 million users.

Scale of the Breach: Over 13 million users were impacted by the breach.
Type of Data Exposed: Usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and names were compromised, and the most concerning aspect was that passwords were stored in plain text, making them easily accessible to hackers.
Cause of the Breach: The breach was caused by a vulnerability in an old version of PHP used on the 000webhost website.

Notification: https://www.facebook.com/000webhost.Global/posts/998261600194776

In October 2024, Cisco experienced a significant data breach that exposed a wide range of sensitive information. The breach was disclosed by a threat actor known as IntelBroker on a popular cybercrime forum.

Scale of the Breach: The exact scale of the breach is still under investigation, but it is believed to have impacted a large number of Cisco customers and employees.

Type of Data Exposed: The stolen data includes a variety of sensitive information, such as: Source code, Hardcoded credentials, Certificates, Confidential documents, Jira tickets, API tokens, AWS private buckets, Encryption keys, Customer data.

Cause of the Breach: The exact cause of the breach is still under investigation. However, it is believed that the threat actor exploited vulnerabilities in Cisco’s systems to gain unauthorized access.

Cisco is investigating claims made by the hacker IntelBroker, who alleges stealing sensitive data, including business customer information and credentials from various tech giants and government institutions. The breach reportedly involves 1,000 organizations such as Amazon, Apple, and the US military.