BoAt Hits With A Massive Data Breach; Over 7.5M Customers Data Leaked

While everyone was praising BoAt for the "Don't be a fanboy" campaign against Apple, a massive data breach of over 7.5 million BoAt customers on the dark web might overshadow BoAt's marketing stunt. According to Forbes India, BoAt lost over 7.5 million customer data, which has left BoAt customers vulnerable to financial fraud.

A hacker named ShopifyGUY accepted to hack into BoAt's database and leak their customers' Personally Identifiable Information. The PII is available on the dark web for sale for 2 Euros and can be used by scammers to commit fraud. BoAt said that they have launched a comprehensive investigation over the matter.

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BoAt Data Breach Might Lead To Several Financial Frauds And Scams

ShopifyGUY leaked the Personally Identifiable Information of almost 7,550,000 BoAt users online on 5 April 2024. The leaked data includes information like name, email ID, contact number, address and more. While talking about the consequences of the data breach, Threat Intelligence Researcher Saumay Srivastava said (via Forbes India):

The consequences for companies include a loss of customer confidence, legal consequences and reputational harm. The major implications make it even more essential to implement adequate security practices.

Rakesh Krishnan, a senior threat analyst at NetEnrich, thinks that the hacker must have gotten access to the data almost a month ago. Since the hacker isn't a known personality in the community, the BoAt breach might help him gain a good reputation. Yash Kadakia, founder of Security Brigade, commented on the matter and said (via Forbes India):

The data is available for eight credits on some forums, so literally, it costs two euros to buy the data. It'll probably be available for free in a few days on Telegram. This data will be used by a lot of scammers for different phone and email scams.

The Indian consumer wear brand hit the headlines last month for their brave ad campaign "Don't be a fanboy", which was a dig against Apple. Fans were impressed by the ad on the front page of the newspaper, and many shared it online on their social media handles, helping BoAt gain good PR. With the data breach fiasco, BoAt's marketing stunt might be neutralized, and they might have to take a step back and work on finding out the loopholes in their system that caused the breach.