In the first quarter of 2024, India experienced a staggering 17.1 million online account breaches, equating to 132 accounts compromised per minute, according to a global cybersecurity firm Surfshark report.
This in itself is a significant increase from the six accounts breached per minute in the last quarter of 2023. The United States topped the list with 90 million breaches, followed by the United Kingdom with 5.7 million.
Surfshark’s report reveals that since 2004, India ranks eighth globally for the highest number of breaches, with 320.5 million accounts compromised.
The most breached countries are the US (3 billion), Russia (2.4 billion), China (1.1 billion), France (521.6 million), Germany (486.7 million), Brazil (354.2 million), and the UK (321.9 million).
Among India's 320.5 million compromised accounts, 88 million are unique email addresses. On average, each email address is associated with 3.8 additional personal records, leading to 1.2 billion personal records exposed over the past two decades.
Furthermore, 162 million passwords have been leaked, putting 50 per cent of breached users at risk of account takeovers, which heightens the danger of identity theft, extortion, and other cybercrimes.
Identity theft, online fraud, account takeovers, hacking, and financial fraud are some of the most commonly reported cases worldwide.
In the most recent quarter, India’s breach rate was 13.3 times higher than Bangladesh’s (1.3 million) and 4.1 times lower than China’s (70.6 million).
A notable incident in India involved Cutout Pro, an AI-powered image and video editing platform, which leaked 8.1 million emails.
Additionally, separate reports highlighted a significant breach affecting the Indian consumer wearable brand Boat, compromising the personal data of over 7.5 million users.
The exposed information included names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and customer IDs.
A major data breach was also confirmed by cybersecurity firm CloudSEK, involving an Indian mobile network database.
The breach, attributed to a threat actor known as 'CyboDevil', resulted in the selling of a 1.8-terabyte database containing the personal information of 750 million individuals on the dark web.
This data included names, phone numbers, addresses, and Aadhaar information, affecting about 85% of India's population.
Lina Survila, a spokesperson at Surfshark, highlighted the global threat of data breaches. “Our monitoring reveals that data leaks are a persistent threat.
Since 2004, 17 billion user accounts have been leaked globally, with 400 million breaches recorded at the start of this year,” she said.
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