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Topics: Crime, News, US News, Technology
Niamh Shackleton
The personal information of 2.9 billion people may have been stolen in a massive cyberattack.
A hacking group going by the name of USDoD claimed to have carried out the enormous attack on National Public Data (NPD) back in April.
The NPD offers personal information to employers, private investigators, staffing agencies and others doing background checks.
The attack resulted in an enormous data breach, including information relevant to private investigators, staffing agencies, and employers.
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As many as 2.7 billion records may have been leaked as a result of the data breach, which the USDoD offered to sell for a staggering $3.5 million for the entire database.
Some UK and Canadian citizens were also said to have been affected by the data breach.
While the hackers wanted millions of dollars for the information, some of the information went on to be leaked by various entities, Fox 5 reports.
The information that has been leaked in the breach is likely to include personal information such as social security numbers and even addresses.
Teresa Murray, consumer watchdog director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and called the breach 'concerning'.
She said in an interview, as per the Los Angeles Times: “If this in fact is pretty much the whole dossier on all of us, it certainly is much more concerning."
Murray added: “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.”
Following the ordeal earlier this year, one person who claims to have been affected by the leak has filed a lawsuit against National Public Data, accusing it of negligence, unjust enrichment, and breaches of fiduciary duty and third-party beneficiary contract, says Bloomberg Law.
The plaintiff, named as Christopher Hofmann in court documents, says his identity-theft protection service alerted him to the breach last month and that his data was exposed in a breach and leaked on the dark web.
As per the suit - which calls for a jury trial - Hoffman has filed the complaint on behalf of himself and 'all others similarly situated'.
The NPD is believed to be cooperating with law enforcement in light of the breach.
For those who have been affected, the NPD says that it 'will try to notify you if there are further significant developments applicable to you' and urges people to closely monitor their financial accounts in case of any suspicious activity, as per CNET.