Data of 500 million WhatsApp users breached and put up for sale

In one of the biggest data breaches ever, mobile phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users across 84 countries have been leaked and have been put up for sale, according to a report by Cybernews,

Such information is mostly used by attackers for smishing and vishing attacks to gain access to credit cards and bank accounts. Users have been advised to remain wary of any calls from unknown numbers, unsolicited calls and messages.

“Someone is allegedly selling up-to-date mobile phone numbers of nearly 500 million WhatsApp users. A data sample investigated by Cybernews likely confirms this to be true,” the report states.

On November 16, an actor posted an ad on a well-known hacking community forum, claiming they were selling a 2022 database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers, according to the report.

The leak reportedly includes over 32 million US user records. The other countries mentioned in the list are Egypt (45 million), Italy (35 million), Saudi Arabia (29 million), France (20 million), and Turkey (20 million). The dataset for sale also allegedly has nearly 10 million Russian and over 11 million UK citizens’ phone numbers.

The threat actor told Cybernews they were selling the US dataset for $7,000, the UK – $2,500, and Germany – $2,000.