List of data breaches and cyber attacks in April 2016 - 166,687,282 records stolen

I’ve been compiling this list for more than two years now, and there’s never been much more to it than a list of links. This month, that changes.

Feedback from the thousands of people who read this list each month has been listened to. From now on, I’ll total up the number of records that have been known stolen in data breaches, as well as a bit more information on some of the larger stories.

Current total number of known stolen records: 166,687,282 (in April 2016)

This article will continue to be updated throughout the month, be sure to come back each day.

Voter data

This month has been dreadful for registered voters – well, dreadful if those countries are the Philippines or Mexico. 55,000,000 voters had their data leaked in the Philippines and 93,424,710 in Mexico.

For me, the Mexican data breach is the worse of the two – and not just because of the larger number of records leaked. The kidnapping problem in Mexico isn’t exactly a secret; in 2015 there were 1,698 cases of kidnapping. It’s not wrong to imagine that a database containing the addresses, names, parent’s names, etc. of every single Mexican civilian could exacerbate the kidnapping situation.

Another dating site

Beautifulpeople.com, a site for beautiful people, suffered a data breach this month, leaking the personal data of 1,100,000 members. The data is already for sale online, including sexual preferences, relationship statuses, income, addresses and more.

What’s interesting about this breach is that it actually took place in December 2015, but beautifulpeople.com claimed that it was a test server and was quickly locked up. However, it turns out that the data used on this test server was in fact real, and someone got their hands on it before it was taken down.

Blackmail from the AshleyMadison breach hasn’t slowed down, and the breach has recently taken another life by suicide. Data breaches of this nature – well, of any nature – are no joke. While beautifulpeople.com isn’t identical to AshleyMadison, it’s not hard to imagine there are some people on that site who’d rather keep it a secret.

Trends and traits of data breaches

To help you understand the trends and traits of data breaches, what they are, how and why they occur, and what you can do to avoid suffering a similar fate, take a look at our book of the month: Managing Information Security Breaches – Studies from real life by Michael Krausz.

This thought-provoking guide details how breaches can be treated and the direction you should take if you’ve been affected.

Buy your copy now.

Have I missed something? Most likely. Please leave a comment below with any breaches or cyber attacks that you believe belong in this list.
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