Largest collection of breached data ever seen is found

[turbinetree]

Source: The Guardian

Store of 770m email addresses and passwords discovered after being put on hacking site

The largest collection of breached data in history has been discovered, comprising more than 770m email addresses and passwords posted to a popular hacking forum in mid-December.

The 87GB data dump was discovered by the security researcher Troy Hunt, who runs the Have I Been Pwned breach-notification service. Hunt, who called the upload Collection #1, said it was probably “made up of many different individual data breaches from literally thousands of different sources”, rather than representing a single hack of a very large service.

But the work to piece together previous breaches has resulted in a huge collection. “In total, there are 1,160,253,228 unique combinations of email addresses and passwords,” Hunt wrote, and “21,222,975 unique passwords”.

While most of the email addresses have appeared in previous breaches shared among hackers, such as the 360m MySpace accounts hacked in 2008 or the 164m LinkedIn accounts hacked in 2016, the researcher said “there’s somewhere in the order of 140m email addresses in this breach that HIBP has never seen before”. Those email addresses could come from one large unreported data breach, many smaller ones, or a combination of both.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/17/breached-data-largest-collection-ever-seen-email-password-hacking

[safeinOhio]

1. They have my GFs phone number.

I love to answer her phone for her.

I've made up my own language to speak to them in.

[PaulX2]

2. Find Hackers Arrest Them Put Them In Prison For 50 Years

Bingo.

Maybe hackers could find something useful to use their skills on in the future.

[zipplewrath]

3. Like the drug "war"

That method has worked so well in the drug war right?

[cstanleytech]

7. I dont think stealing other peoples data and information is exactly on the same level as

people wanting to grow or some weed.

[zipplewrath]

8. Russian Mob

I suspect the russian mob probably wouldn't agree.

[The Truth Is Here]

4. Found in your 700MM CD lists..

*snore*

[angrychair]

5. This is why blockchain is inevitable

The only way to secure data is through blockchain security and encryption. I’ve been in IT for 25 years and passwords are ridiculously simple in most cases and most people use the same password for multiple systems. The more complicated we make password requirements, the more workarounds people find to make them simple again.
Passwords are useless. Cryptocurrency and block chain will be the greatest contribution to information security since the invention of the computer itself.

[KWR65]

6. Privacy & Internet Security are a myth in the 21st Century

[alwaysinasnit]

9. +1000