The security investigator and founder of the infracctions website Have i Been Pwned, has revealed that a new database that includes 773 millions of email accounts and 21 millions of personal passwords stolen, that have been used in automatic credentials imput computer attacks.
That’s the second highest data leak of history after the one in Yahoo! With almost 3000 millions of affected accounts, altough it has to be remarked that it is a compilation of other smaller databases already leaked, explains Troy Hunt.
Being called as “Colection #1” by its discoverer, the compilation was formed by a group of 12000 archives with a size of 87 Gigabytes and almost 2700 millions of registrations, adding 1160 millions of combinations between the emails and passwords, which means that the list include the same persons several times, but in most cases with different passwords.
The database was found by the storaging archives services of MEGA and although it has been deleted it keeps delivering in the exchange networks of archives. The only “good things” is that the leaking is limited haven’t been leaked confidential information like credit card numbers or similar things.
You can check if you are affected by this attack or other similar ones of information leaks in the website Have i been Pwned. Even if you are affected or not, the leak is a reminder of the need of saving safely our data and follow the regular rules to create passwords:
-Do not use typical words or common numbers.
-Combine capital letters with regular ones.
-Combine numbers and letters.
-Add special characters.
-Make the password longer with a longer number secuence.
-Do not use the same password in every place.
-Specially, do not use specific passwords for bank and online shopping.
-Keep the password safe from third persons.
-Value the use of password manager.
– Reinforce the use of passwords with other systems, double authentication or biometric systems.