Carhartt data breach affects 12.9M, half of what ShinyHunters claimed
One AI and two trained eyes delved into the heavily padded leaks
Carhartt's data breach affected 12.9 million individuals, significantly fewer than initially claimed by cybercriminal group ShinyHunters, according to Troy Hunt, who analyzed the leaked data. ShinyHunters leaked what they claimed was 50GB of Carhartt's data following the retailer's hiring of an incompetent negotiator to negotiate the $3.3 million extortion demand.
Hunt discovered that ShinyHunters' data contained synthetic data, which inflated the number of affected individuals. After eliminating fake data, Hunt concluded that 12,933,413 accounts were genuine among the ShinyHunters-leaked dataset. This number was uploaded to Hunt's Have I Been Pwned website, where it was noted that 83% of these accounts were previously part of other breaches.
Hunt advises taking headline numbers with a grain of salt and not to trust the claims of cybercriminals without verifying the findings of trustworthy sources.
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