The personal data of 1 billion China citizens, or about two-thirds of the country's entire population, appears to be available for sale on an underground forum after a data leak.
Data leak occurred when a sensitive document was mistakenly shared in connection to a freedom of information request, and takes place amidst a backdrop of increased tensions and fears of terrorism that have been growing since early 2023.
Concerns about reprisal by the Taliban prompted the UK government to secretly grant asylum to thousands of Afghans and allow them to immigrate to the country, in the wake of a 2022 data leak by the Ministry of Defence.
The Pegasus spyware sold by NSO Group, supposed to only be available to law enforcement and intelligence agencies for legitimate and legal uses, appears to be widely available to repressive governments with little oversight.
Even though the data of 538 million Weibo users sold on dark web is limited, the information still posed a risk especially to the anonymous users sharing unfiltered news around the country.
The 10th anniversary of national Data Privacy Day celebrated on January 28 couldn't have come at a better time for Internet users with the past 12 months filled with stories about cyber security attacks, election meddling, state surveillance, and massive corporate data breaches.
Demand for privacy pros sparked a 30% increase in data privacy jobs in the previous year, with projections that the trend will continue through 2022 and beyond.
Another social media platform API has been abused for data scraping. A listing offering 700 million LinkedIn profiles has appeared on an underground hacking forum.
In a malware attack on Bapco, hackers gained access to the network and loaded the data wiper into the central anti-virus software, from where it was distributed to all machines.
The District of Columbia Board of Elections data breach claimed by a Russian ransomware gang leaked the entire voter roll, including personal information and voting records.
