


Discord officials later announced that they had also complied with the forged data requests. The Discord data breach wasn’t revealed until after personnel from Apple and Meta admitted in an initial report to Bloomberg that both companies fell victim to the forged emergency data requests. What Data Was Stolen in the Discord Data Breach? The Lapsus$ hackers stole large amounts of data using this strategy throughout 2021. So, personnel at Discord had no reason to suspect that the emergency data requests they received were fraudulent because they were coming from legitimate government email addresses. They posed as law enforcement using the government email accounts they had compromised. The hackers responsible for the Discord data breach took advantage of this system. Similarly, data might be requested in an emergency situation where someone has gone missing and their online activity could help law enforcement determine their whereabouts. For instance, a judge might subpoena data in the event that it could contain evidence crucial to a case at hand. Tech companies all generally respond to emergency data requests when there is actually an emergency or urgent legal situation. The hackers used compromised email accounts belonging to government officials to send emergency data requests to Discord employees. A group of hackers known as Lapsus$ was eventually linked to the attacks and certain members were even arrested shortly after news broke of the breaches. The Discord data breach was part of a larger cyber crime scheme that involved compromised government emails. The Discord Data Breach: Fraudulent Government Emails What does the Discord data breach mean for users and cybersecurity overall? Here’s a look at what happened in the data breach, how it succeeded, and what users should know. Despite the size and resources of these companies, they all fell victim to an elaborate forgery scheme. In March 2022, news broke about the Discord data breach that also hit some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Apple and Meta.
