“The mother of all breaches”: 26 billion records found online

Security researchers have discovered billions of exposed records online, calling it the "mother of all breaches". However, the dataset doesn't seem to be from one single data breach, but more a compilation of multiple breaches. These sets are often created by data enrichment companies. Data enrichment is the process of combining first party data from internal sources with disparate data from other internal systems or third party data from external sources. Enriched data is a valuable asset for any organization because it becomes more useful and insightful. The researchers stated: “While the team identified over 26 billion records, duplicates are also highly likely. However, the leaked data contains far more information than just credentials – most of the exposed data is sensitive and, therefore, valuable for malicious actors.” In other news about leaked personal data, a cybercriminal going by the name of “emo” claims they have 15 million unique records of project management tool Trello accounts for sale. Trello is used by many organizations, so it understandably raised some concerns. Atlassian, the company that runs Trello, however denies there has been a breach. It seems as if someone has used a large collection of email addresses and tested it against Trello. This brings us to the question: when do you call a giant leak of personal information a breach, and when don't you? A definition of a breach that makes sense to me is this one: “A breach is an incident where…Read More