Largest password leak hits 16 billion accounts
Cybersecurity experts say it is the biggest leak in internet history.
Leading investigative outlet, Cybernews, has reported that the megabreach has sent shockwaves through the global tech community.
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This breach has prompted urgent calls for digital hygiene.
Digital hygiene refers to "the behavioural habits that people follow online. These include how they communicate with other users online, how they manage their accounts and credentials, and even how frequently they update their device software."
The leak has been linked to stealthy malware operations known as infostealers.
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The leak spans over 30 newly discovered datasets, each containing tens of millions to 3,5-billion records.
Many assumed that the data dumps were recycled from old breaches. Still, researchers have confirmed that nearly all this information is newly compromised, except for one cache of 184 million credentials.
Investigators warned, "This isn’t just another dump, this is a goldmine for cybercriminals."
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This data set includes usernames and passwords from major services like Google, Facebook, Apple, Telegram and some government portals.
The stolen credentials were structured in a clean, usable format, making them easy for attackers to exploit in account takeovers and phishing campaigns.
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Experts say the source of this leak is infostealer malware operations silently harvesting credentials from infected machines over time. These malicious programs often go unnoticed as they lift passwords from browsers, VPNs and social media accounts before shipping data to criminal marketplaces on the dark web.
This leak can be described as a blueprint for mass exploitation. What we’re seeing here is a catastrophic reminder of how easy it is for data to fall into the wrong hands.
Guccione also suggests that individuals adopt password managers, invest in dark web monitoring tools that alert users to their information being exposed, and enable two-factor authentication (2FA).
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