Security News
The 10 Biggest Data Breaches Of 2022
Jay Fitzgerald
According to the newest breach statistics from the Identity Theft Research Center, the number of victims jumped dramatically in the third quarter—a ‘staggering 210 percent over Q2 2022.’
1. Neopets
Number of individuals impacted: 69 million
This breach was quite real, not virtual.
Neopets, the popular virtual pet website that allows users to create and care for digital pets called “Neopets,” disclosed this past summer that attackers had gained access to the Neopets IT systems from Jan. 3, 2021, until July 19, 2022. The company learned about the breach after a hacker offered to sell a Neopets database for four bitcoins.
The result: the possible exposure of information related to about 69 million Neopet customers. The Neopet breach was by far the biggest data breach of 2022 through the third quarter, more than triple the size of the second largest cyberincident recorded by the Identity Theft Research Center.
