More announcements of company data (our data) being stolen. The numbers involved each time are just incredible.
Hackers breach Quora.com and steal password data for 100 million users
Compromised information includes cryptographically protected passwords, full names, email addresses, data imported from linked networks, and a variety of non-public content and actions, including direct messages, answer requests and downvotes. […] In a post published late Monday afternoon, Quora officials said they discovered the unauthorized access on Friday. They have since hired a digital forensics and security firm to investigate and have also reported the breach to law enforcement officials.
Whenever these stories are reported, the articles often end with a little summary of other recent snafus. The one above ended with:
Quora’s post is only the latest disclosure of a major breach. On Friday, hotel chain Marriott International said a system breach allowed hackers to steal passport numbers, credit card data, and other details for 500 million customers. In September, Facebook reported an attack on its network allowed hackers to steal personal details for as many as 50 million users. The social network later lowered the number of accounts affected to about 30 million.
A post from The Register, about that massive Marriott breach, concluded with this reminder of previous losses.
Marriott’s Starwood hotels mega-hack: Half a BILLION guests’ deets exposed over 4 years
Few hacks of individual firm’s customer data have come close to the scale of this one. The Yahoo! breach in 2013 saw three billion email accounts breached, while Carphone Dixons, the UK electronics retail chain, managed to lose control of 5.9 million sets of payment card data. In the US, the US Government Office for Personnel Management (which handles sensitive files on millions of government workers) had the personal data of 21 million employees’ breached by hackers.
Miscellaneous Details 