WhatsApp hit by massive data breach, over 400 million user details from 84 countries exposed

According to intel from the hacking forum - BreachForums, the hacker who somehow got access to details of the personal information of 487 million WhatsApp users posted a dataset to the dark web on November 16, 2022, with the intention to sell off the information.

Cyber Security Hub reports that the leak was first reported by the technology news site, CyberNews, which confirmed it had launched an investigation to ascertain the veracity of the information using a sample of the data set provided by the hacker.

After the investigation by CyberNews, there was a confirmation that 1,914 phone numbers provided by the hackers were not WhatsApp enabled thus meaning they did not belong to WhatsApp users as claimed.

With this position, there was a possibility that the hacker’s claims were “likely’ to be true” according to the report.

As sighted on Cyber Security Hub, some of the country’s data included in the hacked data of the 487 million users are Afghanistan - 558,393, Australia - 7,320,478, Brazil - 8,064,946, Canada - 3,494,385, Germany - 6,054,423, Ghana - 1,027,969, Nigeria - 9,000,131 while three countries - Egypt, Italy, and the USA accounted for almost 100 million compromised users.

The hacker has also set his prices for the data sets on the dark web offering the US dataset for $7,000, the UK dataset for $2,500 and $2,000 for the German dataset.

According to Data Economy, WhatsApp users have been urged to take extra precautions to avoid their private details being leaked on the dark web.

Some of these precautions include not replying to texts or calls from unknown numbers as hackers could use smishing and vishing (usage of fake links delivered over text or voicemail) to obtain information.

While commenting on the leak, a Meta spokesperson ruled out the possibility of a hack adding that the report about the dark web WhatsApp data leak is “speculative” and based on some “unsubstantiated screenshots”.