This was a well-handled data breach in 2024

About to the last few yearsTechCrunch has I looked back for some of the more serious, disruptive data breaches and security incidents hopefully – maybe! – other business giants can take heed and avoid creating the same disasters of the past. To no one’s surprise, we’re back this year and documenting the same bad behavior from new companies.

23andMe has blamed users for a massive data breach

Last year, genetic testing giant 23andMe lost the information of nearly 7 million customers, thanks to a data breach that allowed hackers to access thousands of accounts to search for information on millions more. 23andMe recently rolled out multi-factor authentication, a security feature that could have prevented account hacks.

Within days of the new year, 23andMe launched contempt of court due to the massive data theft of victims, saying that users did not adequately protect their accounts. Lawyers representing a group of hundreds of 23andMe users who sued the company following the scam said the finger-pointing is “absurd.” UK and Canadian authorities soon announced a joint investigation into the 23andMe data breach last year.

23 and I later in the year he laid off 40% of his staff when a company at risk faces an uncertain financial future – as well the company’s main bank of natural customer data.

Change Healthcare took months to confirm that hackers had stolen America’s health care information

Change Healthcare is a healthcare technology company that few people had heard of until February when a cyber threat forced the company to shut down its entire network, resulting in rapid and widespread extinction across the United States and digesting US medical information to stop it. Change, owned by health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group, manages payments and insurance for thousands of doctors and medical practices in the US, processing between one-third and one-half of all US medical transactions each year.

The company is doing hacking – because of the violation the primary user account and the lack of certainty of many things – criticized by Americans who were unable to fill their prescriptions or stay in the hospital for approval; Health care providers who were affected by the cyberattack, as well as lawmakers who told the company’s CEO about the hack in May’s congressional hearings. Changing Healthcare paid the criminals a ransom of $22 million – which the feds have long warned is only helping cybercriminals profit from cybercriminals – just to be fair give a new ransom to ask someone Hack the group to delete its stolen data.

In the end, it took until October – seven months later – to reveal that more than 100 million people had their personal information stolen in a cyber attack. Of course, it must have taken some time, as it was – of all things – biggest health data breach of the yearif not.

The Synnovis hack disrupted healthcare services in the UK for months

The NHS was disrupted for months this year after Synnovis, a London-based healthcare provider, was hit by a ransomware attack in June. The attack, reported by the Qilin ransomware group, left patients in south-east London unable to get blood tests from their doctors for more than three months, and led to thousands of outpatients and more than 1,700 surgeries.

Considering the attack, which professionals saying it would have failed if two-factor authentication had been in place, Unite, the UK’s leading trade union, he announced that Synnovis workers will strike for five days in December. Unite said the incident “had a huge impact on staff who were forced to work long hours and without access to essential computers for several months when the attack took place.”

It is not known how many patients have been affected by the incident. The Qilin ransomware group has reportedly released 400 gigabytes of data allegedly stolen from Synnovis, including patient names, health care registration numbers, and details of blood tests.

Snowflake’s customers deal with a snowflake and a massive data breach

Cloud computing giant Snowflake this year found itself among a number of companies targeting its customers, such as AT&T, Ticketmaster and Santander Bank. The hackers, who were then he was charged with trespassinghacked using information stolen by malware found on the computers of employees of companies that rely on Snowflake. Due to Snowflake’s lack of multi-factor security, hackers were able to break into and rob major banks. data stored by hundreds of Snowflake customers and save the data for redemption.

Snowflake, for his part, said little about what happened at that timebut admitted that the breach was caused by “a campaign aimed at users with only one product.” Snowflake later released several features-by-default to its customers in hopes of avoiding a repeat.

Columbus, Ohio has sued a security researcher for telling the truth about a ransomware attack

When the city of Columbus, Ohio reported a cyber attack over the summer, the city’s mayor, Andrew Ginther, reassured those concerned that the city’s data was “hidden or fake,” and that it would not work for the criminals who stole it. All the while, a security researcher who was tracking data breaches on the dark web in his work found evidence that the ransom group. had access to citizen data – at least half a million people – including their Social Security numbers and driver’s licenses, as well as arrest records, information on minors, and survivors of domestic violence. The researcher alerted the media about the data.

The city is safe received an injunction against the investigator for sharing evidence he found of the violation, a move that appears to be more of an attempt by the city to stop the safety investigator than to fix the violations. The city after that dismissed his case.

The salt blizzard broke the phones and internet, thanks to the US backdoor law

A 30-year-old man backdoor law came back to bite this year after hackers, called Salt Typhoon – one of several China-backed hacking groups laying the groundwork for a potential conflict with the United States – found on the networks of major US telephone and Internet companies. Hackers were found to be accessing real-time calls, messages and communications of US politicians and top officials, including. presidential candidates.

The hackers are said to have penetrated some of the systems of the company, which the telcos had to implement after the implementation of the law, called CALEA, in 1994. Now, due to the continuous availability of these systems – and the data that the telecom. companies save the American people – the US government and now advising US citizens and American officials using end-to-end messaging apps so that no one, not even Chinese thieves, can find their secret messages.

Moneygram has yet to say how many people had their data stolen in the breach

MoneyGram, the US money transfer giant with more than 50 million customers, was hit by hackers in September. The company it has been confirmed that happened a week after customers experienced an untold number of days, only to reveal an unknown “Internet security issue”. MoneyGram has not said whether customer data was taken, but the UK’s data protection regulator has he told TechCrunch in late September that they received a data breach report from a US company, indicating that customer data had been stolen.

A few weeks later, MoneyGram admitted that hackers had stolen customer information at the time of the cyberattack, including Social Security numbers and government IDs, as well as transaction information, such as the dates and amounts of each transaction. The company admitted that the hackers also stole criminal investigation information on a “small number” of customers. MoneyGram has not yet said how many customers had their data stolen, or how many customers it directly notified.

Hot Topic remains mum after 57 million customers lost their lives online

I am 57 million customers are affectedOctober’s breach of US retail giant Hot Topic has gone down as one of the worst commercial data breaches ever. However, despite the extent of the breach, Hot Topic has not publicly confirmed the matter, nor has it alerted customers or the state’s attorney general’s office about the data breach. The retailer also ignored multiple TechCrunch requests for comment.

Legal notice page Am I disappointed?which received a copy of the breached data, warned the nearly 57 million customers who had been hacked that the stolen data included their email addresses, addresses, phone numbers, purchases, gender and date of birth. The data also contained limited credit card data, including credit card type, expiration dates, and the last four digits of the card number.