Jane Edwards
SpyCloud analyzed 3,478 breaches and found that infostealer malware was associated with 61 percent of data breaches in 2023, which included 343 million stolen credentials, according to an annual report released Tuesday.
The 2024 SpyCloud Identity Exposure Report showed that one in four compromised identity records contained information on a user’s physical location or network and that the average digital identity appears in nine breaches and is linked to 15 breach records.
According to the study, researchers at SpyCloud recaptured 43.7 billion distinct identity records and nearly 200 types of personally identifiable information in 2023, including full names, social security numbers and phone numbers.
The report showed that 10.58 million mobile records exfiltrated by malware were recaptured between August and December of 2023.
Researchers recaptured approximately 1.38 billion passwords in the darknet in 2023, reflecting an 81.5 percent increase from the previous year, and found that 723 breaches contained .gov emails in 2023, compared with 695 in 2022.
According to the study, 74 percent of users in two or more breaches reused compromised passwords.
Trevor Hilligoss, vice president of SpyCloud Labs at the company, stressed the need for a multilayered approach to protect digital identities and counter cybercriminals.
“It starts with quickly identifying exposed identities and immediately moves to post-infection remediation – invalidating compromised authentication data for all applications exposed by the infection. It’s a sure-fire way to prevent future cyberattacks resulting from the stolen information,” Hilligoss added.
