WhatsApp Data Breach of 500 Million Users Worldwide

Last month on November 16, 2022, a cyber threat actor posted on dark web hacking community forum, claiming to sell the personal information of approximately 500 million WhatsApp users worldwide. This is 25% of the global active WhatsApp users. The alleged data breach includes the database of users from 84 countries. The worst-hit countries are Egypt with 44 million users, Italy with 35 million users and the US with 32 million users.

The purchase price mentioned was as high as $7000 for the US datasets and $2500 and $2000 for UK and Germany datasets respectively.

WhatsApp Data Breach Investigation

Cyber news researchers who investigated the data breach received a sample data of the US and UK users from the threat actor. Upon investigation, they have confirmed datasets to be WhatsApp users indeed.

Check Point Research (CPR), another cybersecurity firm, has published a report about the WhatsApp data breach supporting the investigation of Cyber news. Their analysis has confirmed data leaks of approximately 350 million phone numbers worldwide. In addition, it has been reported that the whole data was on sale for four days and is now distributed freely among users of the dark web.?

Potential Method Employed?

Cybersecurity experts are of the opinion that scraping is the potential method employed by the threat actor to conduct the breach. It is usually done by violating the application's terms of service. Although entirely speculative, a large chunk of data posted on the dark web, is often obtained through scraping.

They also observe that such data leaks consisting of a humongous amount of personal data for sale on the dark web is worrisome. Although there is nothing to indicate that private messages have been leaked, the phone numbers could be used to conduct phishing attacks, fraudulent activities and impersonation.?

WhatsApp Denies Data Breach

WhatsApp, on their part, has completely denied the data breach, stating that “The claim written on Cybernews is based on unsubstantiated screenshots. There is no evidence of a ‘data leak’ from WhatsApp.”?

It is important to note that researchers have not found substantial evidence to prove the data breach. A few experts from different parts of the world have dismissed the news saying that the dataset is from the leaked Facebook data in 2019. The analysis of the leaked data continues, and more information may come to the fore soon.?

Another interesting observation is that Meta, the company that owns WhatsApp, is no stranger to data breaches. In the past, data of millions of users on Facebook was leaked online. In 2019, it was found that user passwords on Facebook and Instagram were saved in plaintext files. Therefore, the approach towards data needs to be revamped by Meta, and robust measures must be in place to safeguard user data.?

What can you do?

In the wake of the WhatsApp data breach, all users must remain alert till the complete scrutiny of data leaked online is done. Maintain caution about the messages, calls and links you may receive on the app.