Home
News
Reviews
- Consumer
- SMB
Resources
Tools
- RAID Calculator
Trivia
Slack

Search

Home
News
Reviews
- Consumer
- SMB
Resources
Tools
- RAID Calculator
Trivia
Slack

Home Trivia Trivia: What Was the Biggest Data Breach of the Past Ten Years?

Trivia: What Was the Biggest Data Breach of the Past Ten Years?

By

-

August 14, 2025

TRIVIA

What Was the Biggest Data Breach of the Past Ten Years?

The CAM4 data breach of 2020 exposed the full names, email addresses, chat and email contents, sexual orientation of 10.9 billion of their users. The breach happened because of a misconfigured Elasticsearch database which was inadvertently left world-accessible. CAM4 is a sexually-themed live streaming service. So in addition to the usual threats of identity theft, and being added to phishing attack databases and brute-force password databases, the unfortunate users of the CAM4 platform are also likely to be blackmail targets. They could be susceptible to defamation attempts for years to come. In 2003 Yahoo! suffered a breach that compromised the records of 1 billion user accounts. The breach was only revealed in 2016 when Yahoo! was in the midst of negotiations with Verizon who were considering buying Yahoo! that year. Shortly after the first announcement, it was discovered that the figure was actually 3 billion compromised user accounts. In addition to the usual personally identifiable information, the leaked data also included users' security questions and answers. Users were requested to change their passwords and to enter new security answers and questions. Yahoo! promised these would be encrypted this time. The Aadhaar system was launched in India in 2009. It provides a unique 12-digit ID number to Indian citizens and passport holders. In March 2018 it was revealed that the personal information of more than 1 billion registered users could be bought on the dark web. It contained their full real names, their 12-digit number, and their bank details. It also contained biometric data such as thumbprints, retina scans, and any other identifying physical feature. The cause of the breach was another misconfigured database running on a system maintained by a state-owned utility company. The smallest breach in our list still managed to compromise the personal data of 885 million users! The First American Financial Corporation had a massive breach in 2019. The data was made up of bank records, social security numbers, mortgage details, and wire transactions, and drivers license images going back over 16 years. Amazingly, the data was accessible to anyone with a web browser. No hacking required.

Previous articleLaCie 6Big Thunderbolt 3 Review: Fast, Glamourous, and Expensive DAS

Next articleSeagate IronWolf Pro 18TB hard drive: Fast, Tons of Capacity, No Shingling

Dave McKay has over 30 years of experience in the IT industry. He has been a freelance programmer, the manager of an international software development team, an IT services project manager, and a Data Protection Officer. He is now a technology journalist and independent Data Protection and Compliance consultant.

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Trivia: Who Was The First Hacker To Make The FBI’s Most Wanted List?

Trivia: Which Hackers Can Be Hired or Employed by Businesses to Strengthen Their Cyber Security?

Trivia: Which Cyber Attacks Use SMS Text Messages to Dupe the Victim?

ITEnterpriser Newsletter

Subscribe to stay updated with the latest news on data storage, network security, and surveillance.

Latest posts

Small business owner reviewing security checklist.

A Practical Guide to Small Business Network Security in 2025

ItEnterpriser - August 17, 2025

This article provides a clear roadmap for implementing crucial cybersecurity measures to safeguard your company's digital assets.

What is BTRFS file system linux kernal

What is Btrfs? The Better (than most) File System

Jon L. Jacobi - August 14, 2025

Btrfs may be a "better" file system next to everything except ZFS, but what Btr actually stands for is not "better", or "butter", but...

Four disks showing how RAID 1 handles your data via disk striping

What is RAID 0? All Speed, No Safety

Jon L. Jacobi - August 14, 2025

RAID (Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks) is the combining of multiple disks to mimic a single physical storage device. Depending on the type, or...

Seagate IronWolf 510

Seagate IronWolf 510 Review: A Long-lived NVMe Caching SSD Specifically for NAS

Jon L. Jacobi - August 14, 2025

Seagate's IronWolf 510 NVMe SSD is a fast reader with an excellent endurance rating, but it's a very slow, albeit hyper-steady writer. When I...

A metal referee's whistle

What is Whistleblowing, and How to Remain Anonymous

Dave McKay - August 14, 2025

Whistleblowing is a catch-all term for disclosing wrongdoing in an organization. Not everyone will agree it’s for the greater good, so to be safe...

ABOUT US

ITEnterpriser is an independent online authority in the world of data storage, network security, and surveillance in both enterprise and consumer sectors.

FOLLOW US

About
Contact
Ethics
Sponsorship
Slack
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Subscribe

© 2020 ITEnterpriser, LLC. All rights reserved.