A massive data breach has exposed 16 billion login credentials, with nearly all of them coming from previously undiscovered databases, according to a report from Tom's Hardware.
While most large-scale breaches typically recycle known leaked credentials, this one revealed almost entirely new information. Cybernews researchers discovered multiple extensive datasets, including three collections containing over 1 billion credentials each. The largest batch alone held 3.5 billion records from Portuguese-speaking populations.
"It is not yet known who originally owned most of the data batches making up the breach," Tom's Hardware reports. This uncertainty means security experts cannot provide specific guidance on how individuals might protect their compromised information.
As Tom's Hardware notes, these massive credential collections are often weaponized for "major digital offensives like phishing scams or other attacks that scale up well."
Previously:
• Zappos Data Breach consolation might be the most egregious one yet
• Vtech toy data-breach gets worse: 6.3 million children implicated
• Equifax blames hack on state actors, but breach followed spat with security contractor
• Vtech breach dumps 4.8m families' information, toy security is to blame
• Massive security breach exposes anonymous Twitter accounts' email addresses and phone numbers
• Facebook insists that Cambridge Analytica didn't 'breach' data, but 'misused' it, and they're willing to sue anyone who says otherwise
• Was that huge 2017 Equifax data breach part of a nation-state spy scheme?
• Facebook: Hackers got (very) personal data from 29M users. FIND OUT if your info was breached.
