Australia's surprise spot on list of most-hacked countries

As the digital world continues to grow, so does digital criminality.

A new study by the Netherlands-based Surfshark has revealed data breaches surged in the second quarter of 2023, with more than 110 million accounts leaked around the world.

And Australia has an unwelcome spot in the following top 10 most-breached countries for the quarter.

Brazil was the 10-most breached in the world during the period measured, with 805,612 accounts leaked.

Worldwide, breaches in the second quarter were up 156 per cent on the first.

The UK followed, with 914,990 accounts leaked.

Italy had 1.15 million accounts leaked.

There were 1.35 million leaked accounts in India.

However, overall, in the second quarter of the year data breaches in Asia declined.

Australia's relatively recent major data breaches at companies like Medibank and Optus made headlines, so perhaps it's no surprise to see us represented here - despite having by far the smallest population of any of the top 10 countries.

Australia had 1.9 million accounts leaked in the year's second quarter.

The top five breached countries, collectively, had about twice as many leaked accounts as the bottom five.

Turkey came in fifth, with 2.75 million leaks.

France saw 3.44 million accounts leaked in data breaches.

Data breaches leaked 3.72 million accounts in Spain.

Russia, in the second spot, leapt up an order of magnitude with 15.27 million leaks.

But even that level of data breaching paled next to the country in number one.

The US saw 49.82 million accounts leaked through data breaches in the second quarter of 2023.

That's an 830 per cent increase on the first quarter of the year, when the US saw 5.4 million accounts leaked.