Heineken Data Breached; 8,174 Employees’ Data Leaked

According to information on a post, 888 has breached the security of Heineken Lager Beer company and exposed the data of 8,174 Heineken employees across different countries. 

888 is a group of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), popular for their use of advanced hacking techniques, like malware, zero-day exploits, and spear phishing to infiltrate the security of different institutions and companies in order to expose their sensitive information.

The tweet reads that the group hacked into Heineken’s network on Sunday, June 2, with the help of a third party and revealed the employees’ data, including “IDs, User IDs, Full Names, Email Addresses, Company and Roles.”

Heineken Company at a Glance

Heineken N.V., a Dutch brewing company, manufactures Heineken Lager Beer. The company launched the Dutch pale lager beer, which has an alcohol content of approximately 5%, in the Netherlands in 1873.

Currently, the beer company reports a revenue of about €36.4 million from the distribution of its premium beer brands, such as Heineken and Desperados, across more than 70 countries worldwide.

Although Heineken N.V. brews the beer in only eight countries – the United Kingdom, Ireland, India, Serbia, Australia, New Zealand, Costa Rica, and Saint Lucia – it distributes it to over 200 countries worldwide. In 2016, Heineken, the company’s flagship brand, was designated the official beer partner of the FIA Formula One World Championships.

As at press time, the company has not issued a public statement regarding the security breach nor its mitigation strategies.

Home Depot Data Breach

In a similar development, the threat actor IntelBroker infiltrated into the network of Home Depot, the largest home improvement retailer in the United States, and disclosed the sensitive information of about 10,000 employees.

The leaked data included sensitive information like the full names and email addresses of the employees, which could expose the affected employees to cyber crimes like identity theft and phishing.

The scope of the breach was quite extensive, given that the affected company, Home Depot, is the largest home improvement retailer  in the United States with operations involving hundreds of stores and the support of more than 490,600 employees (data estimated as at 2021). The company also recorded about $157 billion revenue in 2023 showing its influence in the retail market.