Technology

11 New Hacking Attacks Reported Last Week

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There have been a total of 579 data breaches recorded so far in 2014 by the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC). Nearly 77 million records have been exposed, including the breach of 56 million credit and debit card numbers at Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD), the largest breach ever recorded for a retail company.

This week’s total does not include an attack on J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) resulting in the theft of personal contact data of 76 million account holders. That breach was first thought to have affected just 1 million of the banks customers.

The medical/health care sector continues to post the largest percentage of the total breaches, 43.4% (251) out of the total of 579. The number of records exposed in these breaches totaled 7.14 million.

On the basis of the number of records exposed, the business sector accounts for more than 65 million breached records in 200 incidents.

Banking/credit/financial breaches total 23 incidents, involving more than 1.1 records, just 4% of the 579 total and 1.5% of the number of records exposed. That total will skyrocket when the J.P. Morgan data breach is added.

A total of 232 breaches to date have involved Social Security numbers and 95 have involved credit or debit cards.

The ITRC notes that 36.3% of the reported number of breaches do not indicate how many records were exposed due to lack of available information.

Since 2005 there have been 4,827 data breaches tabulated, involving more than 669 million exposed records.

ALSO READ: The 10 Biggest Data Hacks of All Time

 

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