Fresh Zacks Data Leak Exposes Personal Records of Over 8 Million People

A data leak containing 8.8 million records belonging to Zacks Investment Research people was recently dumped on a newly emerged hacking forum, according to Troy Hunt, creator of the Have I Been Pwned platform.

In December 2022, the US-based stock and mutual fund research company disclosed a data breach that exposed the personal information of almost 1 million people after threat actors gained unauthorized access to its network.

However, according to Hunt, the newly surfaced data was dated May 2020, well before the previous breach the company reported.

Potentially compromised information includes customers’ names, email addresses, user names, unsalted SHA256 passwords, addresses and phone numbers.

The researcher noted that no credit card and bank account details were included in the data dump posted on the Dark Web forum on June 6, 2023.

What should users do?

Although Zacks had initiated a mandatory password reset for people impacted by the security event announced in late December 2022, the freshly leaked database containing 8.8 million user records will undoubtedly appeal to threat actors.

The data could be abused to conduct targeted phishing and credential-stuffing against victims, and users are advised to reset passwords (both on the Zacks platform and other online accounts with the same login credentials), and carefully screen all unsolicited correspondence to avoid financial and security repercussions.

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