Since April, hackers with a history of selling stolen data have claimed to have leaked billions of records from a US data broker, affecting at least 300 million people, in what could be one of the biggest data breaches this year.
The data reviewed by TechCrunch is incomplete, but appears to be partially legitimate in itself: Advertised on a popular cybercrime forum, the stolen data is years old and purported to include full names, home address histories, and Social Security numbers of US citizens, data that is widely sold by data brokers.
However, verifying the source of the suspected data theft proved inconclusive – such is the nature of the data broker industry, which gobbles up individuals' personal data from a variety of sources with little to no quality control.
According to the hackers, the data broker in question is National Public Data, which describes itself as “one of the largest providers of public records on the Internet.”
On its official website, National Public Data claimed to sell access to several databases, including a “People Finder” that allows customers to search by Social Security number, name, date of birth, address, and phone number, a database of U.S. consumer data covering more than 250 million individuals, a database of voter registration data containing information on 100 million U.S. citizens, and a criminal records database.
Malware research group vx-underground said on X (formerly Twitter) that they had examined the stolen database in its entirety and “can confirm that the data it contains is authentic and accurate.”
“We searched for several individuals who agreed to have their information looked up,” the group wrote, adding that they were able to find information about those people, including names, address history going back more than 30 years, and Social Security numbers.
“I was also able to find my parents and siblings. [sic] “Parents, deceased relatives, uncles, aunts, cousins,” vx-underground wrote.
TechCrunch conducted a similar effort to verify the data's authenticity, with mixed results.
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In examining a small sample of 5 million records, we found a large number of names and addresses that matched corresponding public records. But we also found some data that didn't necessarily make sense, such as email addresses with different names, that didn't clearly relate to the rest of the associated individual's data. Some of the records even purportedly contained information about prominent people, including the personal data of a former U.S. president.
TechCrunch provided the names of the eight consenting individuals to the US Department of Defense, the hackers selling the data, in an attempt to verify whether the hackers actually had legitimate data. The hackers never returned any of the eight individuals' data.
TechCrunch also contacted 100 people whose phone numbers and email addresses were included in the sample, and only one responded, confirming that some, but not all, of the allegedly stolen data was accurate.
Direct inquiries to the sources of the alleged data theft did not yield many answers.
Despite multiple attempts to contact the company, National Public Data has not responded, nor has its founder and CEO, Salvatore Verini. After TechCrunch first contacted National Public Data last week, the company removed website pages that contained details of the databases to which it sells access.
Not all data breaches claimed by hackers are real, especially those touted on hacking forums, which is why TechCrunch and other cybersecurity reporters often spend a great deal of time verifying data breaches, an effort that sometimes ends inconclusively.
However, this alleged breach by data brokers appears to be an exceptional case as some of the data is genuine and some has already been verified.
The proliferation and commoditization of personal data across the data broker industry makes identifying the source of a data leak even more difficult, and even if this particular data breach remains unresolved, it further demonstrates that the data broker industry is out of control and creating real privacy issues for ordinary people.
While we weren't able to definitively solve the mystery of this data breach, we did have enough information to allow us to elaborate on our investigation. One thing is clear: as long as data brokers are collecting personal information, there remains a risk that it will be leaked.