Pinterest may have suffered a major data breach affecting millions of users. While the company has denied any breach of its system, a hacker has leaked a database allegedly containing 60 million rows of Pinterest user data. They publicly posted a partial database on a popular leak forum. It contains six million records, including email addresses and IP addresses. The leak primarily impacted Pinterest users in the US and France.
Alleged Pinterest data breach primarily impacts the US and France
Spotted by Cyber Press, a hacker named “Tchao1337” recently leaked a database containing six million records of Pinterest user data. It says that it’s a partial database from a 2024 breach with 60 million rows of data. The hacker is unsure about the source of the leak, so it isn’t clear who extracted the data from Pinterest’s system. The exact timeline of the breach is also missing, and so is the full extent of the exposed information.
However, Cyber Press verified that the public database contained email addresses, usernames, user IDs, and IP addresses. As such, it poses a series security threat to affected Pinterest users. The leaked information can be misused by hackers and threat actors for phishing attacks and identity theft. There is also a risk of unauthorized access to online accounts. If you have a Pinterest account, you should stay vigilant and change your passwords.
That said, Pinterest has outright denied the breach. “We have investigated this claim. Our investigation has found no evidence of a compromise of our system or user data,” a company spokesperson told Cyber Security News. In the meantime, VPN provider Surfshark launched an investigation and found that the leaked database indeed contains information about Pinterest users. It says 6.8 million IP addresses were leaked.
Of that, 1.91 million IP addresses, and the same number of email addresses, belong to US users. Accounting for almost 28% of all exposed data points, the US was the second-most affected region behind France. The leak exposed the personal data of 1.97 million French Pinterest users. India, China, and the UK are the next three most affected regions, with over 216,000 users. Brazil, Micronesia, Germany, and Japan had over 100,000 affected users.
Over 200 million US users have had their emails leaked in 2024
According to Surfshark, this leak takes the total number of leaked email addresses in the US this year to over 207 million. The firm’s cybersecurity research hub reports that nearly four billion emails have been leaked in the US since 2004. You should change your passwords at regular intervals and avoid clicking on suspicious links. Enabling 2FA (two-factor authentication) helps secure your account in the case of a data breach.
2024-07-19 15:04:28