Hackers accessed personal data from more than 160 million users
According to network
security and ethical hacking experts from the International Institute
of Cyber Security, Dubsmash, the popular video app, suffered a data breach at
the end of 2018. It is estimated that the incident affected about 162 million
users, exposing information such as:
- User
full names - Usernames
- passwords
- Phone
Numbers - Emails
- Location data
Recently, the compromised information was found
for sale on some hacker forums on dark web. The app has more than 100 million
downloads only in Google Play Store.
The information has been published on the Have
I Been Pwned platform, which records known data breaches and allows
users to check if their email credentials have been compromised in any of these
incidents. According to this website, the data breach notification at Dubsmash
was published on February 25, 2019, specifying that 161,749,950 Dubsmash
accounts worldwide were affected.
Although, according to network security
specialists, Dubsmash should notify affected users, the company has not made
any actions to meet this requirement. However, not everything is bad news,
users concerned about the state of their personal information can go to the
Have I Been Pwned (haveibeenpwned.com) website, enter their email id and the
platform will verify if their account has been Involved in some data breach
incident.
Fortunately there are other similar platforms
that host huge databases on security incidents where users can verify if their
information has been compromised. As an additional measure, network security
specialists recommend identity Protection Services, which monitor the network
for suspicious activity carried out with the accounts of the affected user.
The information extracted from Dubsmash is
offered for sale on dark web along with another 500 million of accounts stolen
from sites such as CoffeeMeetsBagel,
MyHeritage, MyFitnessPal, among others. Apparently, the entire database is
offered at about $20k USD, paid through cryptocurrency transactions.
