TransUnion Denounces Data Breach Claims, Suggests Third-Party Data Leaks

Consumer credit reporting agency, TransUnion has refuted data breach claims made by the well-known hacker ‘USDoD.’ The threat actor has gained notoriety in recent years after being associated with some big-name security breaches.

The incident came to light when USDoD posted several gigabytes of stolen data on BeachForums, a well-known dark web forum used for sale and purchase of hacking information. The actor claimed to have stolen the database containing sensitive personally identifiable information (PII) directly from the TransUnion system.

According to vx-underground researchers, the stolen database of around 58,505 individuals is said to contain full name, sex, age, credit score, passport, credit scores, and financial transaction details, among others.

‘’The database appears to be compromised on March 2nd, 2022. This leaked database has information on individuals all across the globe including the Americas (North and South), as well as Europe,’’ the post on X (formerly Twitter) stated.

The Chicago-based company on the other hand denied these claims, ‘’immediately upon discovering these assertions, we partnered with outside cybersecurity and forensic experts to launch a thorough investigation.’’

‘’At this time, we and our internal and external experts have found no indication that TransUnion systems have been breached or that data has been exfiltrated from our environment,’’ the company said in a statement.

It further went on to say that there is a discrepancy between the content and format of data posted, linking the incident to a third-party data leak. ‘’Through our investigation, we have found that multiple aspects of the messages – including the data, formatting, and fields – do not match the data content or formats at TransUnion, indicating that any such data came from a third party.’’

However, another post on X by Emsisoft threat analyst Brett Callow revealed the published post on BreachForums by USDoD.