The volume of banking data of Russians leaked into the network has grown 57 times over two years. The number exceeded the population of the country. The Moscow Times writes about this.
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How According to an InfoWatch study, 170.3 million records of clients of banks and financial companies were publicly available. Compared to 2022, the volume of leaked data increased 3.2 times, and from 2021 – almost 57 times.
A total of 64 origins occurred in 2023: this is 12.3% more than in 2022 and almost double the 2021 figure. Half of them, 46.9%, were admitted by banks. Insurance companies demonstrated a sharp increase in such incidents from 3.5% to 25% per year.
Data of clients of microfinance organizations, payment services, cryptocurrency and traditional exchanges, and investment companies were also compromised. The victims could have ended up in the database more than once.
According to the study’s authors, the sharp increase in data leaks is associated with the activation of organized hacker groups after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. First of all, we are talking about “politically motivated” hackers.
“Their main goals were to undermine sustainability, psychological pressure on financial organizations and intimidate clients,” noted InfoWatch.
In In 2023, cyber attacks accounted for 87.5% of leaks. In 2022, this figure was 84.2%, and in 2021 – 57.6% of cases. Some cyberattacks involve individuals working for financial institutions or as cover for internal thefts.
Typically, the stolen data is then published publicly. In the future, they use hackers for phishing attacks and fraud, including the use of social engineering methods to deceive clients.
Russia ranks second in the world in data leaks in the financial sector after the United States. In 2023, it accounted for 6.1% of the total number of such incidents, a year earlier – 9.8%.
