This data breach news timeline walks the biggest breaches from Target (2013) to 2026, with what each one teaches. Breach history repeats — the time machine shows the pattern.
The timeline reveals that breach causes barely change: unpatched systems, stolen credentials, and third-party compromises dominate from 2013 through 2026. Record-setters like the 3-billion-record Yahoo incident and the 147-million-record Equifax breach share the same root causes as this year's entries.
Pick a year from 2013 to 2026. See the worst breaches of that year — victim counts, real publicly-reported costs with the inflation math shown, and links to the published reporting. No guesses, no invented numbers.
BreachHunter by Ingenious AI watches for your data in breaches and leaked databases — so you hear about it before the headlines do.
Get early access to BreachHunterEquifax, disclosed in September 2017, exposed the personal data of about 147 million people and led to a settlement of up to $700 million announced by the FTC in July 2019.
Target reported approximately $292 million in breach-related costs, per its public disclosures. Adjusted for inflation, that is roughly $411 million in 2026 dollars.
Yahoo's 2013 breach, disclosed in 2016 and later revised, affected all 3 billion user accounts — the largest publicly disclosed breach by victim count.
Yes — cost figures appear only where a real figure was publicly reported by the company or a regulator, and each breach links to published reporting. Where no cost was disclosed, the page says so explicitly.