If you have a Google, Yahoo or Microsoft email account, it’s time to change your password. In an exclusive report on Reuters, a security expert said hundreds of millions of hacked user names and passwords for emails and other sites is being traded on the Russian blackmarket.
Alex Holden, founder and Chief Information Security Office of Hold Security, said 272.3 million accounts were stolen. The majority were users of a popular Russian email service. A smaller portion were Google, Yahoo and Microsoft email accounts.
According to Holden, this is one of the biggest thefts uncovered since the cyber attacks on U.S. Banks and retailers two years ago.
Holden was key in uncovering some of the world’s biggest data breaches including Adobe, JPMogan and Target. He made this latest discovery after a Russian hacker was seen bragging in an online forum about more than a billion stolen records he was ready to give away.
“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.
Interestingly, the hacker was asking just 50 roubles – less than $1 – for the entire collection. But when Holden and his crew offered to post favorable comments about the hacker in an online forum, he gave up the information for free.
Click here to read the entire Reuters article.
