Today it has been reported that the largest collection of breached data has been discovered in a popular hacking forum. The 87Gb of data discovered by security researcher Troy Hunt contains 770m email addresses and passwords.
Experts Comments below:
Ed Macnair, CEO at CensorNet:
“Following data breaches, its common to find stolen details up for sale on the internet as it’s a hugely lucrative business, but the size of this haul is staggering. Although, this was probably always going to happen as enterprising criminals have got pretty good at streamlining their processes.
“Credential theft has been the leading cause of data breaches for a number of years and people still don’t seem willing to take action and put in place steps to ensure their accounts are less likely to be compromised. It isn’t just consumers, businesses around the world suffer the same problem of employees using the same combination of usernames and passwords across multiple accounts and, given the size of this database, there’s a very good chance corporate information is included.
“The same advice as ever stands. Use unique passwords for different accounts and, for consumers, a password manager to help create and store those details. Businesses should also have in place comprehensive security to prevent hacks, alongside additional authentication requirements so that an employee’s identity is guaranteed when they are logging into company resources. It really is about time this message sinks in.”
