The alert has been reactivated in the United States for a cyber attack that has leaked passwords and personal data. The digital alert in Cybersecurity has been activated after knowing that companies such as Apple, Google, Microsoft or Facebook have been hacked and users’ personal data could be stolen. This event has also alarmed banks, and the use of cloud data storage, increasingly by companies. Do you think it could have affected you?
What has happened?
Jeremia Flower, a cybersecurity expert, has brought this information to light after discovering it in his latest investigation. This is the leak of more than 148 million passwords from users of platforms such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft or Apple in the United States. In addition, government financial services and banks are also affected. Email addresses and passwords have been exposed, putting users’ privacy at risk.
Flower stated that “This is the kind of list that cybercriminals dream about”, and added that this has been one of the most dangerous filtrations of all times. Many companies such as AWS, Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure use cloud storage services in order to reduce costs, which, forgive the redundancy, has meant an even higher cost. In 2024, the increase in leaks is 312% higher than the previous year, according to the annual report of the Identity Theft Resource Center. In 2023, 82% of data was stored in the cloud, according to a recent IBM report. If this type of storage is proving to be unsafe, why is it still being used?
The severity of a cyber attack increases when we repeat the same password for different accounts and services, which makes it easier to attack all our accesses. Perhaps, at the end of reading this article, it is a good time to update our passwords.
What can I do to protect my data?
You don’t have to be a NASA engineer to take action in these kinds of situations. One of the simplest and most effective measures recommended by Teresa Murray, from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, is to change all our passwords and not repeat any. Try to make them difficult by combining numbers, letters, special characters, upper and lower case letters.
Use your imagination and creativity, especially for bank accounts. Avoid using birth dates or phone numbers as they are easy to get. Murray also recommends to freeze credit records, especially if you are a customer of Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. This way, we can prevent that accounts are opened or credits are requested in our name if they have been victims of the filtration.
How do I know if I have been hacked?
There are free online tools that allow you to check if you have been a victim of a cyber attack and if your data has been compromised. For example, if you have an account with Google, you can access Password Cheup from Google and consult it. There are other online tools, although one of the most effective ways is to contact the company in question and consult directly.
Other cases of cyber attack
Remember the case of Coinbase? The cryptocurrency buying, selling and storage company was caught in a scandal of huge dimensions due to an attack on its database. The losses reached $400 million according to the company and that they did not pay the ransom they demanded. All for a bribe of foreign support agents that almost led the company to its collapse.
It is important to realize that today power and wealth are not found in banks, but in databases. In an increasingly digitised and less tangible world, we must be up to date with the security and protection measures that are within our reach, to keep our data safe and avoid, as far as possible, being victims of a cyber attack and its terrible consequences.
South Table had to pay compensation after suffering a cyber attack, read more!
