WhatsApp: 487 million phone numbers stolen, 1.6 million from Switzerland

According to a possible leak report from the source "Cybernews", 487 million phone numbers have been put up for sale on the Internet. The phone numbers are said to originate from WhatsApp users and to be up-to-date. According to the "Cybernews" platform, WhatsApp users from 84 countries are affected. Switzerland is also said to be the source of 1.6 million of the phone numbers. According to the company's own information, the numbers could be viewed and assigned to WhatsApp users. Security experts used a sample to determine that the data was obviously genuine.

One of the thread discussants told "Cybernews" that the phone numbers were traded for around $7000, the records from England for $7000, and those from Germany for $2000.

It remains unclear where the database came from. According to "Cybernews", the seller only states that he got the data sets via "his strategy". The majority of the alleged telephone data (45 million) appears to come from Egypt. Italy (35 million) and France (20 million) and Germany (6 million) are also said to be affected by the data leak.

The parent company "Meta", which was contacted by "Cybernews", has not yet issued a statement on the incident.

Source: Cybernews