Top 6 Recent High-Profile Company Data Breaches in 2023
1. Activision: February 2023
The video game publisher behind the Call of Duty franchise, Activision, confirmed on February 19th, that they had suffered a data breach back in December. The hacker used an SMS phishing attack on an HR employee to gain access to employee data, including their emails, cell phone numbers, salaries, and work locations.
Activision claims that the attack was addressed swiftly and that there was not sufficient data obtained to warrant alerting their employees directly after the data breach. However, a security research group investigated the breach and reported that the hacker had also gained access to the gaming companies 2023 release schedule, along with the sensitive employee info. Due to California law, if 500 or more employees’ data. is breached, the company must alert the team. Time will tell if the hesitation to alert employees of the issue will result in legal, and possibly financial, trouble.
2. Google Fi: February 2023
Google Fi is the most recent high-profile data breach, but it comes as a consequence of the T-Mobile data breach that happened earlier in 2023 (discussed below). Because Google doesn’t have it’s own network infrastructure and had to piggyback on T-Mobile’s network, they were affected by their massive data breach, compromising their customers’ phone numbers.
Although it’s simply phone numbers, there is a lot cybercriminals can do with that kind of customer information, including phishing attacks intended to deceive users into clicking links that allow the hackers access to other info. If you are a Google Fi user, be extra careful of suspicious messages in 2023.