The Mother of All Breaches: A Wake-Up Call for Digital Identity Protection

Funso Richard
4 min readJan 29, 2024

Securing our digital footprints has become more critical as data breaches pose a major threat to the safety of our digital identities.

Recent headlines have been dominated by the news of an enormous data breach, aptly named MOAB, or the Mother of All Breaches. This historic data leak has exposed 26 billion records from a diverse array of sources, including social media giants like LinkedIn and Twitter, digital platforms like Adobe and Canva, and health apps like MyFitnessPal.

The breach has also unveiled records from numerous government bodies worldwide, including those from the US, Brazil, and Germany. Cybersecurity researchers, who recently discovered this leak, consider it one of the most impactful in history.

The exposed data comprises sensitive details such as usernames, passwords, email addresses, phone numbers, financial data, personal information, and government records. Cybercriminals could potentially exploit this data for nefarious activities like identity theft, social engineering, phishing, and cyberattacks. The source of the leak remains a mystery, with theories suggesting a malicious actor, a data broker, or a data aggregation service provider could be responsible.

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Funso Richard

AI Pragmatist Ethicist & GRC Thought Leader. I write about governance, risk, cybersecurity and strategy to help organizations minimize business risks.