The personal data of over 5 million Salvadorans made available for free on the dark web. This marks the largest data breach in the country’s history.
On April 6th, a hacker decided to make personal information of 5.1 million Salvadorans available for free on the dark web: names, dates of birth, phone numbers, residential addresses, email addresses, and DUI (Identification Document) numbers. The breach was also confirmed by the local outlet La Prensa Gráfica. The file includes millions of high-definition photos of Salvadoran citizens.
The breach affects the majority of adults in the country, considering that the population of El Salvador is approximately 6.6 million citizens, including children.
The 144GB database has been available for download since last August at a price of $250. On April 6th, the hacker decided to release the data for free.
It has not yet been confirmed whether the stolen data comes from registrations on the Chivo wallet, the State wallet introduced with the Bitcoin Law on September 7th, 2021. However, the suspicion is quite concrete, considering that the leaked information matches the data required for registration on the wallet. This hypothesis was supported by a user on X who highlighted the correspondence between the published data and those necessary for registration on Chivo.
