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10 worst hacks and data breaches of 2019 (in pictures)

A slew of hacks, data breaches, and attacks tainted the cybersecurity landscape in 2019.
By Charlie Osborne, Contributing Writer
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1 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

Ministry of Health HIV registry

Over in Singapore, the Ministry of Health admitted to a data breach exposing the confidential and highly sensitive records of over 14,000 individuals diagnosed with HIV. This information was then leaked online. 

  For the full list of the year's worst security disasters, see These are the worst hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches of 2019.

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2 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

Facebook, Facebook Lite and Instagram​

Hundreds of millions of users may have been impacted by shoddy password storage management by Facebook, in which account credentials were stored in plaintext. 

For the full list of the year's worst security disasters, see These are the worst hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches of 2019.

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3 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

FEMA

FEMA accidentally exposed the PII and financial information of 2.3 million disaster victims, including those who survived Hurricane Harvey and Irma.

For the full list of the year's worst security disasters, see These are the worst hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches of 2019.

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4 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

Georgia Tech

A web application with wide-open access compromised the security of 1.3 million records belonging to current and former Georgia Institute of Technology employees and students.

For the full list of the year's worst security disasters, see These are the worst hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches of 2019.

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5 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

American Medical Collection Agency (AMCA)

Unauthorized access to a database led to the exposure of medical data belonging to roughly 20 million individuals held by AMCA. The information leak also impacted other companies including LabCorp and Quest Diagnostics.

For the full list of the year's worst security disasters, see These are the worst hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches of 2019.

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6 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

Capital One

Capital One disclosed a data breach impacting 100 million US citizens and 6 million individuals in Canada. A configuration vulnerability in a database was responsible for the exposure of PII from 2005 and 2019.

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7 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

Los Angeles police

The Los Angeles' Personnel Department was subject to a data breach after a hacker claimed to have stolen the PII of 2,500 serving LAPD officers, trainees, and recruits, and data belonging to roughly 17,500 Candidate Applicant program enrollees. 

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8 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

Biostar 2

A biometrics database used by the UK Metropolitan Police, banks, and enterprise companies leaked millions of records, including biometric data and fingerprint scans.

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9 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

3Fun, dating apps

A mobile application used to find willing participants for threesomes was found to be a "privacy trainwreck" by researchers that could be manipulated to hone in on the specific locations of individuals. The app claims to cater to 1.5 million active users. Three dating applications, Grindr, Romeo, and Recon, were also found to contain security flaws that led to the exposure of a user's location.

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10 of 10 Charlie Osborne/ZDNET

Adobe

Adobe left the details of 7.5 million Adobe Creative Cloud customers on an unsecured database exposed online without authentication credentials being required for access. 

For the full list of the year's worst security disasters, see These are the worst hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches of 2019.

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