Some of the biggest security breaches

In the digital age, data breaches have become a common occurrence, with hackers constantly finding new ways to steal sensitive information. The following are some of the largest known breaches in history:

1. Yahoo! Data Breach (2013-2016)

The data breach of Yahoo is one of the most infamous cases of a known cyberattack. It currently holds the record for the most people affected. Over a span of three years, a team of Russian hackers targeted Yahoo’s database, stealing records from all user accounts. Exfiltraded included names, email addresses, phone numbers, birth dates, passwords, calendars, and security questions. Initially, Yahoo reported stolen data from about 1 billion accounts. However, after Verizon bought out Yahoo in 2017, they reported that the final number of records totaled about 3 billion accounts affected.

2. Microsoft Data Breach (January 2021)

In one of the largest cyberattacks in US history, over 30,000 US businesses were affected by a sweeping attack on the Microsoft Exchange email servers. The hackers were able to exploit four different zero-day vulnerabilities that allowed them to gain unauthorized access to emails from small businesses to local governments.

3. RockYou2021 Data Breach (2009)

Back in 2009, threat actors hacked into the web servers of social app RockYou, accessing over 32 million user passwords stored in plaintext. Now, in what appears to be the largest data breach in history, attackers have compromised 262 times as many passwords. With 3.2 billion leaked passwords from multiple databases, this attack has been dubbed RockYou2021.