No, not every Social Security number in the U.S. was stolen
Summary: A class action lawsuit filed Aug. 1 against data broker National Public Data claims a breach exposed more than 3 billion personal records, including every U.S. Social Security number, based on a threat actor's April claim of access to data on every person in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Cisco Talos reports the claim is unsubstantiated: a Pentester search tool turned up nothing for the author's immediate family, and TechCrunch found much of the allegedly stolen data incomplete or incorrect, though some was legitimate.
Why it matters: A threat actor's exaggerated breach claim, repeated as fact, drives FUD that pushes users toward phony identity-protection scams capitalizing on the incident - the attackers' intended outcome.
Read the original at Cisco Talos ↗
- Topics
- Threat Actors & Nation-State
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