Every year, more people are using mobile applications. According to calculations, there will be 230 billion mobile applications downloaded worldwide in 2021. Additionally, in Q1 2022, consumers spent 5.03 USD on average on mobile apps. This is an amazing figure. Cyberattacks have, however, been on the decline during the past year, which has given users more confidence in using programs to store their data.
However, in recent years, there has been a resurgence in interest in cyber-attacks. Numerous incidents and hacking activities started to be discovered, and consumers’ data started to be targeted. Actually, this has been going on ever since the first instance, which surfaced on the social media platform LinkedIn in 2012.
Why are cases of data breaches and data leaks prone to occur? and has always been a hot topic of conversation from year to year and is sold illegally on several sites, such as the dark web and forum websites. What exactly is the problem? We have collected facts and data as well as ways so that your application does not experience data loss. Read until the end and find the solution.
What are Data Breaches?
Data breaches are cyber attacks carried out on purpose by hackers in order to gain access to a system. Hackers will enter the data source and extract sensitive data such as names, addresses, account numbers, usernames, passwords, and other information.
4 Cases of Data Breach in 2022
We’ve compiled a list of significant, recent data breaches (as well as a couple of significant data leaks) that occurred in 2022.
Cash App Data Breach
On April 4, 2022, parent company Block confirmed a Cash App data breach affecting 8.2 million customers in a report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Customer names and brokerage account numbers were among the information stolen in the breach, which occurred in December 2021.
Apple & Meta Data Breach
According to Bloomberg, two of the world’s largest technology companies were caught off guard in late March by hackers posing as law enforcement officials. In mid-2021, Apple and Meta gave the threat actors customer addresses, phone numbers, and IP addresses. The hackers had already gained access to police systems in order to send out fraudulent demands for the data.
Twitter Data Breach
The first reports that Twitter had suffered a data breach involving phone numbers and email addresses associated with 5.4 million accounts began to circulate, with the company confirming in August that the breach was genuine. The vulnerability that enabled the breach was discovered by Twitter around the turn of the year and had been patched by January 13, 2022, implying that data theft occurred within that brief window.
TikTok Data Breach Rumour
After a Twitter user claimed to have stolen the social media site’s internal backend source code, rumors began to circulate that TikTok had been compromised. However, after inspecting the code, a number of security experts, including haveibeenpwned.com’s Troy Hunt, have deemed the evidence “inconclusive.” Users on YCombinator’s Hacker News, on the other hand, speculated that the data is from an eCommerce application that integrates with TikTok.
A spokesperson for TikTok told Bloomberg UK that the company’s “security team investigated this statement and determined that the code in question is completely unrelated to TikTok’s backend source code.”
Of the 5 cases, several large companies experienced incidents of data breaches. What are the common causes for these data breaches to occur? we have compiled for common causes. If you are interested to create own social media app you can read our article. If you want still to read let’s break down the causes.
What are the Common Causes of Data Breaches?
Sign In Credential Weaknesses
Standard login credentials are the source of the data breach. Many of the default login credentials included with new devices are made public, even by cyber criminals. As a result, unaltered factory default credentials are considered data leaks.
Common username and password combinations include “admin” or “12345.”
In addition, there is no access authentication factor that should be a layer of your application’s security. This can be a loophole for hackers to get into your database system.
Software Vulnerabilities
Software vulnerabilities, such as zero-day exploits. Zero-day vulnerabilities are software vulnerabilities that are discovered by an attacker before the vendor is aware of them. Hackers create convenient paths to sensitive resources. This kind of behavior can lead to a number of security incidents, including unauthorized access, malware attacks, compromise of social media accounts, and credit card theft.
How Can Data Breaches be Prevented?
Several companies and organizations have had to close due to losses from cyber attacks. How to keep your mobile application user data safe? Here are our suggestions.
Use Multi-Factor Authentication
The best thing you can do is get a password manager for your users. This will allow you to create a strong User password that is sufficiently long and different for each user account. However, you should also use additional security measures, such as 2-Factor Authentication, if possible, to create a second line of defense.
Encrypt All Data
If the data is accidentally leaked, cybercriminals will find it useless if it is effectively encrypted. Use the most secure encryption methods available, such as AES encryption and PGP encryption.
Final thought
So how secure is your mobile application against cyber attacks? do not make your user as a victim in the practices carried out by hackers. From the business side, maybe you need their data for advertising purposes and to understand the interests of your users.
But what happens to your user data is taken by a hacker? Of course, this will result in users of your application being down and reduce user confidence in the application. Do not let your application become the main target of hackers. Better to prevent right? improve the security of your application early on to avoid terrible incidents and threaten the sustainability of your business. If you wish to consult about the security of your application don’t hesitate to contact us.
