Dark Web hackers selling 80 million US voters’ data stolen from 20 different states

• The compromised data includes voters’ IDs, full names, current and previous addresses, phone numbers and citizenship status.
• Political entities could likely use the information to influence the result of US midterm elections.

Over 80 million US voters’ records have been found on the dark web, listed for sale, just ahead of the US midterm elections. The data belongs to individuals residing in 20 different states.

Researchers at cybersecurity company Carbon Black found that cybercriminals had somehow managed to steal the records of 81,534, 624 voters and are now selling them on the dark web, BleepingComputer reported. The compromised data includes IDs, full names, current and previous addresses, phone numbers and citizenship status of voters.

Experts suggested that political entities could use the information to influence the results of the upcoming election. They could use these details to send political campaign ads and messages to targeted audiences.

According to the researchers, Alabama topped the list, with a total of 132,788 voters’ data available on the dark web. This was followed by Alaska with 487,415 voters data being sold on the underground market.

This is not the first time that researchers have discovered voters’ data on the dark web. Earlier in October, a high profile dark web vendor was found offering information of 35 million voters for a price ranging between $150 to $12,500.

Other details

Carbon Black’s Quarterly report also provides insight into cyberattacks that occurred during the third quarter of 2018. One of the major findings revealed that most of the attacks originated from either China or Russia. A total of 113 cyber attacks were analysed for the research and nearly 47 percent of these attacks originated from China and Russia. The rest of the attacks came from North America, Iran, North Korea and Brazil.