Millions of Meta-owned WhatsApp users could be affected by what could be the platform’s biggest data breach to date.
This is after an ad posted on a hacking community forum by an actor allegedly selling a database of 487 million WhatsApp users’ mobile numbers, according to Cybernews.
WhatsApp has more than two billion users globally.
WhatsApp with your data
The anonymous seller, who posted the ad on 16 November, claims to be in possession of a 2022 data set containing WhatsApp user information from 84 countries.
African countries listed as part of the database with affected users include Egypt (44,823, 547), Ghana (1,027, 969), Namibia (409,356), Libya (4, 204, 514), and Nigeria (9 000,131).
Though South Africa was not listed on the database on Cybernews, the list notes that 14 323 766 users from Africa have been affected.
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Other countries affected include the United States (32,315,282), the United Kingdom (11,522,328), China (670,334), and India (6,162,450).
The seller did not disclose how they accessed the database, noting that they used their own strategy to acquire the information. According to Cybernews, the information could have been harvested (scraped). Harvesting information is a violation to WhatsApp’s Terms of Service. The seller, who is selling the US database for $7 000, the UK for $2,500, and Germany for $2 000, says the database contains information from active users. Cybernews says it confirmed part of the database list and the numbers appeared to be actual numbers used on WhatsApp.
Information on the database could potentially be used by attackers for fraud, phishing, and impersonation.
Source: Cybernews
