The 7 Million Name Breach: How One Phone Call Hacked Robinhood (ep. 494)

On November 3, 2021, Robinhood’s security systems were working perfectly. The firewalls were up. The encryption was active. But none of that mattered. Because the hacker didn’t attack the code. He attacked the customer support rep.

In the final chapter of the Robinhood Trilogy, Mr. Ed uncovers the "Vishing" (Voice Phishing) attack that exposed the personal data of 7 million users. We explain how a simple phone call bypassed millions of dollars in cybersecurity and gave a stranger the "God View" keys to the database.

In this episode:

The Method: What is "Vishing"? How hackers use psychological manipulation instead of code to break into secure systems.

The Attack: How the attacker convinced a support employee to hand over their credentials (likely through remote access tools).

The Loot: The 5 million email addresses, 2 million full names, and 300+ detailed identity profiles that were stolen.

The Lesson: Why the "Human Firewall" is always the weakest link in Database History.

It doesn't matter how good your SQL is if you give away the password.

Tags: #Robinhood #CyberSecurity #SocialEngineering #Hacking #DataBreach #DatabaseHistory #Vishing #InfoSec #MrEd #TechNews