November 13, 2024 at 04:45PM
Data for 122 million individuals was stolen from DemandScience and leaked by a hacker known as ‘KryptonZambie’ in February 2024. Although the company initially denied a breach, investigations later revealed the leaked information came from a decommissioned system, now added to Have I Been Pwned for notifications.
**Meeting Takeaways:**
1. **Data Breach Confirmation**: It has been confirmed that the business contact information of 122 million individuals was stolen from DemandScience, a B2B demand generation platform, and is being sold by a threat actor known as ‘KryptonZambie’.
2. **Nature of the Data**: The stolen data includes full names, physical addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, job titles, functions, and social media links, all of which were aggregated from public sources and third parties.
3. **Initial Response**: DemandScience initially denied any breach, stating that their systems were operational and secure, and activated their security protocols in response to the claims on BreachForums.
4. **Data Leak and Cost**: As of August 15, 2024, KryptonZambie began selling the dataset for a small fee (8 credits), effectively allowing access to the data at little to no cost.
5. **Investigation Findings**: A subsequent investigation by DemandScience concluded that the leaked data came from a system that had been decommissioned two years prior and did not originate from current operational systems.
6. **External Validation**: Security expert Troy Hunt verified the authenticity of the data leak, reporting on personal data exposure, including his own from a previous employment at Pfizer.
7. **Public Notification**: All 122 million unique email addresses from the leaked dataset have been indexed on the Have I Been Pwned platform, with notifications sent to exposed subscribers regarding the breach.
8. **Continued Monitoring**: DemandScience continues to monitor the situation following their investigation and responses from exposure incidents.