A post on a “well-known hacking community forum” claims almost half a billion WhatsApp records have been breached and are up for sale.
The post, which multiple sources have confirmed is likely to be true, claims to be selling an up-to-date, 2022 database of 487 million mobile numbers used on WhatsApp, which contains data from 84 countries.
This means that almost one-quarter of all WhatsApp’s estimated two billion monthly active users are possible at risk.
More than 32 million of the leaked records are said to be from users in the US, with 11 million from UK users. Other affected nations include Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), Turkey (20 million), and Russia (10 million).
It seems that individual countries’ data is up for grabs, with the US dataset up for $7,000, and British numbers up for a similar per-capita figure of $2,500.
Most alarmingly…
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