Danish Central Database Breach Exposes Records of 8 Million People

Minister Christina Egelund characterized the intrusion as a serious incident. Hackers gained entry not by circumventing the system's core defenses, but by exploiting the credentials of a private company that held authorized access to the database. Although the intrusion occurred in September, officials did not detect the unauthorized activity until October 2.

The compromised Central Person Register contains records for 11 million people, a figure exceeding Denmark’s current population of 6 million due to the inclusion of historical data spanning decades. The stolen cache includes names, addresses, and government-issued identity numbers required for tax payments and public services. While the government has refrained from naming the perpetrators, the incident mirrors global trends of large-scale identity data theft, comparable to previous major breaches in Turkey and India.