Up to 80 nations are said to have been impacted by the most recent WhatsApp data hack, including Russia, Italy, Egypt, Brazil, Spain, and more. India is also included on the list.
WhatsApp, which has a user base of over two billion people, appears to be facing data and privacy issues once more. According to a Cybernews article, an unknown vendor posted the personal information of about 500 million WhatsApp users for sale on a hacker forum.
Who is affected?
The social media corporation has not yet commented on this, but according to the article, it looked into many data samples and discovered that the leak was real. Up to 80 countries were apparently affected by the leak, including Brazil, Spain, Egypt, Italy, Brazil, and more. India is also included on the list. The referenced source released a graph on its Twitter account that demonstrates how more than 6 million people’s personal information had been exposed online.
Why was it hacked?
According to the report, the threat actor is asking $7,000, $2,500, and $2,000 for the US dataset, UK dataset, and German dataset, respectively. It did not show the cost in other countries, including India. How the hacker amassed the phone numbers of millions of active WhatsApp users is yet unknown.
How was it hacked?
According to the study, it may not have been WhatsApp’s fault and the hacker may have used a technique called “scraping,” in which the data was gathered from several websites rather than through a cyberattack. There is a possibility that the phone numbers were obtained from websites.
Hackers may use the exposed information for spamming, phishing scams, identity theft, and other online crimes. According to the given source, consumers can try to avoid scamming attempts by ignoring them even if they won’t be able to determine if their number is in the database.
In Short
The data of 6 million WhatsApp users in India have been leaked online.
The leak has reportedly affected as many as 80 countries.
The leaked data can be used by hackers for spamming, phishing attempts, and more.
The biggest question is are you safe as a WhatsApp user?
