Rabat – New alarming data suggests that 18.9 million Whatsapp accounts were hacked following a cyber attack targeting tech giant Meta, the parent company of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
According to a recent report from Cybernews, the hack allegedly targeted 500 million WhatsApp users.
The entity behind the attack was first spotted online when someone posted in a well-known hacking community forum that he was selling up-to-date mobile phone numbers of almost 500 million WhatsApp users, the report explains. The post dates back to November 16.
The database for sale allegedly contained WhatsApp user records from 84 countries, 32 million of which belong to users in the United States.
Other countries significantly affected by the hack are Egypt with 45 million user records, Italy with 35 million, Saudi Arabia with 29 million, France with 20 million, and Turkey with 20 million.
The dataset for sale allegedly also holds 10 million Russian accounts and more than 11 million phone numbers belonging to UK nationals.
The cybercriminals are reportedly selling the data of American users for $7,000, the UK for $2,500, and Germany for $2,000, the report further specifies.
Hacked WhatsApp accounts are regularly used to target individuals and steal valuable personal data.
Following an investigation conducted by Cybernews, the outlet found out that a sample of WhatsApp accounts on the hacked database does indeed belong to actual users.
WhatsApp’s parent company Meta has long been criticized for making it possible for third parties to harvest users’ data. A previous incident mentioned in the report saw over 533 million users’ data leaked on a forum for cybercrime activities.
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