SoundCloud Data Breach Impacts 29.8 Million Accounts

A data breach at SoundCloud exposed information tied to 29.8 million user accounts, according to Have I Been Pwned. While SoundCloud says no passwords or financial data were accessed, attackers mapped email addresses to public profile data and later attempted extortion. BleepingComputer reports: The company confirmed the breach on December 15, following widespread reports from users who were unable to access SoundCloud and saw 403 "Forbidden" errors when connecting via VPN. SoundCloud told BleepingComputer at the time that it had activated its incident response procedures after detecting unauthorized activity involving an ancillary service dashboard. "We understand that a purported threat actor group accessed certain limited data that we hold," SoundCloud said. "We have completed an investigation into the data that was impacted, and no sensitive data (such as financial or password data) has been accessed. The data involved consisted only of email addresses and information already visible on public SoundCloud profiles."

While SoundCloud didn't provide further details regarding the incident, BleepingComputer learned that the breach affected 20% of all SoundCloud users, roughly 28 million accounts based on publicly reported user figures (SoundCloud later published a security notice confirming the information provided by BleepingComputer's sources). After the breach, BleepingComputer also learned that the ShinyHunters extortion gang was responsible for the attack, with sources saying that the threat group was also attempting to extort SoundCloud. This was confirmed by SoundCloud in a January 15 update, which said the threat actors had "made demands and deployed email flooding tactics to harass users, employees, and partners."

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