WhatsApp phone numbers of 487 million users from 84 countries have been stolen and put up for sale on a hacking community forum.
WhatsApp phone numbers of 487 million users from 84 countries have been stolen and put up for sale on a hacking community forum.
According to a report by Cybernews, the database up for sale on a popular hacking forum comprises the private data of Whatsapp users from 84 countries.
WhatsApp has denied the claims. "The claim written on Cybernews is based on unsubstantiated screenshots. There is no evidence of a 'data leak' from WhatsApp," said a spokesperson.
The person who put up the data for sale claims that there are 32 million records of users from the US within the set. It also has millions of users from Egypt, France, Italy, the UK, Russia, Spain and India.
As per the report, the US dataset is available for $7,000, the UK for $2,500 and Germany for $2,000. The price of other regions, including India, has not been revealed.
Cybernews reported that when they reached the seller, he shared 1,097 UK-based numbers as proof. The publication investigated the numbers and confirmed that they were from WhatsApp accounts.
It is still not clear how they obtained the data. The report states that hackers could have done so using “scraping,” where the data is obtained from different websites, instead of any cyberattack.
The leaked data can be used by hackers for phishing attempts, spamming, identity theft and other cybercriminal activities.
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