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Major data breach involved ‘only’ 1.3 million people

By Judy Sanhz Published August 19, 2024

Information from a hacking group and a class action lawsuit document sourced by Bloomberg Law reported that a recent data breach of 2.9 billion personal records leaked sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers. But until now, National Public Data (NPD) had not officially confirmed the breach or the number of affected users.

In a new statement about the breach, NPD explained: “There appears to have been a data security incident that may have involved some of your personal information. The incident is believed to have involved a third-party bad actor that was trying to hack into data in late December 2023, with potential leaks of certain data in April 2024 and summer 2024.” Separately, in a notification about the breach on the Maine Attorney General’s website, it was revealed a total of 1.3 million people were affected.

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If it turns out to be true that just 1.3 million people were affected by the breach, that’ll be relatively great news. The 2.9 billion number, after all, was at a scale that made it one of the worst data breaches in internet history.

So far, no official mention of any affected U.K. or Canadian victims has been made. However, NPD states that it is cooperating with law enforcement, reviewing the affected records, and will try to notify those affected if further significant developments apply to affected users.

The National Public Data strongly encourages you to take preventive measures to help prevent and detect fraudulent activity by closely monitoring your financial activity. NPD also recommends contacting the three U.S. credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion) for free credit reports.

You can also place a fraud alert that tells creditors to contact you before anyone tries to change existing accounts or open new ones. For example, when you place a fraud alert with TransUnion, it must legally let Equifax and Experian know.

If you have never dealt with either credit agency, you’ll have an easier time placing a credit freeze or fraud alert with TransUnion than Equifax or Experian. We’ll have to wait and see if the number stays at 1.3 million.

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Computing Writer

Judy Sanhz is a Digital Trends computing writer covering all computing news. Loves all operating systems and devices.

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One of the worst data breaches in history just got even worse

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New details have surfaced about what is reportedly one of the most critical breaches in internet history. As Tom's Hardware reports, a user who goes by the alias Fenice claims to have posted for free a more complete version of the allegedly stolen data from the background check company National Public Data and published it on a popular hacking forum.

On August 6, Fenice posted the data affecting 2.9 billion personal records and claimed that a distinct hacker named SXUL, not USDoD, caused the breach. While others had posted copies of the data before, none were apparently as complete as the one Fenice provided. Nonetheless, there are apparent problems with the data, including wrong Social Security numbers.

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AMD isn't patching Ryzen 1000, 2000, or 3000 processors, nor is it patching Threadripper 1000 and 2000 CPUs, reports Tom's Hardware. The company claims that these older CPUs fall outside of its support window, despite the fact that millions are still in use. Still, even the most recent Ryzen 3000 chips were released over five years ago, and it makes sense that AMD would want to focus its support on new chips like the Ryzen 5 9600X and Ryzen 7 9700X.

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You may be a victim in one of the worst data breaches in history

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Background check company National Public Data -- also known as Jerico Pictures -- suffered what is reportedly one of the most significant data breaches in history, affecting 2.9 billion personal records that leaked sensitive data such as Social Security numbers and more, as mentioned in a class-action lawsuit document and sourced by Bloomberg Law. What's even worse is that it's not known how the breach happened in the first place -- or who has been included in it.

Before getting into it, it's worth noting that National Public Data has not confirmed the breach yet, so there's a lot of information that's only coming from the lawsuit or the hacking group. That means some of the figures will need to be taken with a grain of salt. Still, it doesn't sound good.

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