Hackers May Have Stolen Every American’s Social Security Number From Background Check Firm

Billions of records that purportedly contain personal data of every American, Canadian and Briton has reportedly found its way to a shadowy online identify-theft marketplace — where it’s been served up at no charge to legions of criminals.

In April, a notorious hacker group called “USDoD” claimed it had obtained 2.9 billion personal data records that it stole from National Public Data, an obscure background check firm that is a DBA brand of a Jerico Pictures Inc in Coral Springs, Florida. Claiming the data covered every person in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, the hackers put the trove up for sale at $3.5 million.

In the following months, other groups published distinct subsets of the data haul, Bleeping Computer reports. However, on August 6, someone claiming to have obtained breached National Public Data information via another person or entity called “SXUL,” served up 2.7 billion records in two files totaling 277GB — for free.