If you get your e-mail from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or Mail.ru, you need to read this. According to Reuters, millions of hacked emails usernames and passwords have been discovered in Russia’s criminal underground. As in 272.3 million of them. That’s not a trivial number:
The latest discovery came after Hold Security researchers found a young Russian hacker bragging in an online forum that he had collected and was ready to give away a far larger number of stolen credentials that ended up totalling 1.17 billion records.
After eliminating duplicates, Holden said, the cache contained nearly 57 million Mail.ru accounts – a big chunk of the 64 million monthly active email users Mail.ru said it had at the end of last year. It also included tens of millions of credentials for the world’s three big email providers, Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo, plus hundreds of thousands of accounts at German and Chinese email providers.
“This information is potent. It is floating around in the underground and this person has shown he’s willing to give the data away to people who are nice to him,” said Holden, the former chief security officer at U.S. brokerage R.W. Baird. “These credentials can be abused multiple times,” he said.
My advice. Assume that you are part of this and change your password. Better yet, if the mail service of your choice has the option of two factor authentication, use it. That way you can ensure that your e-mail stays secure.
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This entry was posted on May 4, 2016 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Millions Of Email Usernames And Passwords In The Wild
If you get your e-mail from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, or Mail.ru, you need to read this. According to Reuters, millions of hacked emails usernames and passwords have been discovered in Russia’s criminal underground. As in 272.3 million of them. That’s not a trivial number:
The latest discovery came after Hold Security researchers found a young Russian hacker bragging in an online forum that he had collected and was ready to give away a far larger number of stolen credentials that ended up totalling 1.17 billion records.
After eliminating duplicates, Holden said, the cache contained nearly 57 million Mail.ru accounts – a big chunk of the 64 million monthly active email users Mail.ru said it had at the end of last year. It also included tens of millions of credentials for the world’s three big email providers, Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo, plus hundreds of thousands of accounts at German and Chinese email providers.
“This information is potent. It is floating around in the underground and this person has shown he’s willing to give the data away to people who are nice to him,” said Holden, the former chief security officer at U.S. brokerage R.W. Baird. “These credentials can be abused multiple times,” he said.
My advice. Assume that you are part of this and change your password. Better yet, if the mail service of your choice has the option of two factor authentication, use it. That way you can ensure that your e-mail stays secure.
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This entry was posted on May 4, 2016 at 6:46 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Hacked. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.