You've been hacked
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Cyber-heist of 2.9B personal records
California resident Christopher Hofmann filed the potential class-action complaint against Jerico Pictures, doing business as National Public Data, a Coral Springs-based firm that provides APIs so that companies can perform things like background checks on people and look up folks' criminal records. As such National Public Data holds a lot of highly personal information, which ended up being stolen in a cyberattack.
According to the suit [PDF], filed in a southern Florida federal district court, Hofmann is one of the individuals whose sensitive information was pilfered by crooks and then put up for sale for $3.5 million on an underworld forum in April.
If the thieves are to be believed, the database included 2.9 billion records on all US, Canadian, and British citizens, and included their full names, addresses, and address history going back at least three decades, social security numbers, and the names of their parents, siblings, and relatives, some of whom have been dead for nearly 20 years.
It's believed that a digital thief using the handle SXUL exfiltrated the files from National Public Data and then passed it along to a criminal gang that goes by USDoD, who acted as the data broker for the stolen goods and assured would-be buyers that none of the purloined info was scraped from public sources.
Hofmann, in the August 1 lawsuit, says he received a notice from his identity-theft protection service around July 24 notifying him that his personally identifiable information (PII) had ended up on the dark web.
He claims he never provided this sensitive info to National Public Data and "believes that his PII was scraped from non-public sources by defendant."
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Heard this one on the radio. This is a BIG deal, since non-public sources are involved.
Cybercrime needs three things:
- International cooperation, with full extradition treaties.
- Stiff criminal penalties. For something like this, I'm not opposed to a mandatory 30 years in prison.
- Increased focus and funding, by all nations, but especially those in the first world or near first world.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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Heard this one on the radio. This is a BIG deal, since non-public sources are involved.
Cybercrime needs three things:
- International cooperation, with full extradition treaties.
- Stiff criminal penalties. For something like this, I'm not opposed to a mandatory 30 years in prison.
- Increased focus and funding, by all nations, but especially those in the first world or near first world.
@Jolly Agree with all three of your points. Unfortunate, but the majority for the hacking criminals are coming from countries that are not agreeable to #1 (Russia, DPRK, China, etc.) or the governments themself are involved.
