Russia takes lead as the most hacked country globally

Updated on: 15 November 2023

Jurgita Lapienytė
Chief Editor

Russia the most hacked country — By Shutterstock

Last quarter, nearly 110 million accounts were breached, with Russia ranking first among all breaches from July to September, cybersecurity company Surfshark said.

Throughout this decade, the US remained the single most breached country. However, at the start of 2022, Russia surprisingly took the lead. The number of hacked Russian accounts had risen by 136% month-over-month since the end of February when the Kremlin decided to invade Ukraine.

Russia, with 22.3 million leaked accounts, is followed by France (13.8 million), Indonesia (13.3 million), and the US (8.5 million).

Breaches are up by 70% (44.5 million) in Q3 compared with Q2. Every second in the past three months, 14 accounts were leaked, Surfshark’s data indicated.

“It’s concerning to see data breaches rising again after a comparatively timid first half of the year, putting a massive 108.9M internet users at risk,” Agneska Sablovskaja, lead researcher at Surfshark, said.

Russia’s ally Belarus recorded a 4x growth from the previous quarter - 539,000 leaked accounts. Ukraine, on the other hand, experienced a 14% drop.

A whopping 1370% increase in breached accounts in Indonesia arose from several large-scale cyberattacks, pushing the country’s parliament to ratify the Personal Data Protection acts.