2024 is almost over, but a lot has happened in cybersecurity, especially hacks and data breaches. Cyberattacks affect millions of people and businesses yearly. Many entities still fall victim despite heavy investment in protecting customer information and data. Hackers are finding new ways to bypass security measures. The common methods include tricking workers into downloading a report, clicking a link, or revealing a password. Between 2022 and 2023, there were 35,167 data breaches, affecting 10,343,677,251 individuals in the United States alone. This post will highlight significant leaks in 2024 and their effects.

Top 2024 Data Breaches and Leaks

It seems hard to believe, but over 100 data breaches occurred in 2024 alone. That’s right! However, we’ll only cover the most significant ones and wrap it up with a few dishonorable mentions.

Tencent Data Breach

The Tencent data breach occurred in August 2024, exposing the personal information of 1.4 billion users. The hacker, Fenice, revealed emails, QQ IDs, and phone numbers totaling 500GB of files. Due to its sheer size, the leak was dubbed the “Mother of All Breaches.” Although Tencent never disclosed what caused the breach or the full extent of the damage, it highlighted concerns surrounding data protection.

Indian Banks Ransomware Attack

In August, 300 Indian banks suffered a ransomware attack that disrupted banking operations in the country. The hacker targeted C-Edge Technology, a banking technology system provider. As a result, all payment systems were temporarily shut down. Like Tencent, investigations are ongoing to reveal the scale, cause, and data types affected.

AT&T Data Breach

2024 will not go down as one of the best years for AT&T. In March, the telco giant suffered a breach that exposed 65.4 million past account holders from 2019 and 7.6 million current account holders. The leaked data includes names, house addresses, phone numbers, date of birth, account passcodes, and social security numbers. So far, the company does not know whether the data originated from AT&T, a third-party processor, or another entity.

AT&T data has been subjected to various breaches over the years, but this is the first time the company has admitted that its data leaked. In July, just months from March, AT&T confirmed cybercriminals stole a cache of data containing phone numbers and call records of nearly all its customers, or around 110 million people. However, the stolen data is not public, as reports suggest AT&T paid a ransom to delete the data.

Dell Breach

Dell is investigating claims that 10,800 data of its employees leaked. Although the number is small compared to others on our list, we’re mentioning it because the company suffered two breaches one weekend. In September 2024, “Grep” posted the claims to the infamous dark web forum BreachForums, claiming to have employee IDs, full names, internal IDs, and employee status. Just hours later, another threat actor posted news about a breach that exposed internal data totaling 3.5 GB uncompressed. Earlier this year, Dell disclosed a data breach affecting 49 million customers.

Dishonorable Mentions

• MOVEit: The CLOP malware gang exploited a security flaw and leaked the confidential data of 77 million people and over 2,600 companies through ransomware. Total global damages were worth over $12 billion.
• Ticketmaster Entertainment, LLC: The Justice Department is preparing to file an antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster’s parent company after the hacker in May leaked over 560 million customer records and offered them for sale. The information includes order history, name, address, email, and payment information.
• Life360: The company admitted hackers stole names, email addresses, phone numbers, addresses, and purchase order history in June. The hackers also accessed tools to process location requests by law enforcement and are requesting a ransom.
• Bank of America: In February, BOA suffered a ransomware attack targeting one service provider. It affected 57,000 customers and provided unauthorized access to names, social security numbers, credit card information, account numbers, addresses, and phone numbers.
• Oregon Zoo: The Oregon Zoo data breach occurred in August and compromised the personal information of 118,000 people. Although the Zoo didn’t provide the scale, the breach exposed sensitive personal data.

Explore some prominent data hacks and breaches and their impacts on businesses in the table below.

S/N	Date	Victim	Business Impact
1.	January	Infosys McCamish Systems	6 million data
2.	January	Trello	15 million users
3.	January	Hathaway	4 million users
4.	January	LinkedIn	500 million records
5.	February	Clearview AI	4 million records
6.	February & June	PlayDapp
7.	March	Prudent Financial	2.5 million records
8.	April	Anthem Inc.	10 million records
9.	June	U.S. Department of Education	1.5 million records
10.	August	Snowflake Cloud Service	900 million records
11.	September	Kootenai Health	460 thousand records
12.	September	Slim CD	1.7 million data
13.	September	Penpie Defi	$27,348,259 (Ethereum)
14.	September	Indodax	$22 million of crypto
15.	September	Johnson County Board of Education	$3 million records
16.	September	BingX	$44 million (crypto)

Conclusion

We’ve highlighted 25 significant data breaches in 2024, but you’ll be surprised to discover the numbers run into hundreds worldwide. From stealing 300 million patient interactions from U.K. pathological lab Synnovis to the MediSecure data breach that saw nearly 13 million Australians lose their health information, data leaks occur more frequently than you think.