Science
Urgent Warning For Gmail Users: 183 Million Passwords Exposed In Massive Data Breach
A cybersecurity specialist has cautioned individuals to verify their accounts, as a significant cyber attack may have resulted in the theft of millions of passwords.
Australian cybersecurity specialist Troy Hunt has reported that approximately 3.5 terabytes of data had been taken.
Hunt cautioned that all principal providers own email addresses inside this vast corpus of compromised data.
In an interview with Mail Online, the cybersecurity expert indicated that this data theft may have impacted those utilizing services such as Outlook and Yahoo, among others, but underscored that Gmail frequently plays a significant role in such breaches.
Hunt reports that the compromised data encompasses approximately 183 million distinct email addresses, along with the corresponding websites and utilized passwords.
Hunt asserted that the incident was not a singular breach but a compilation of data files produced and aggregated by malware, commonly referred to as stealer logs.
He explained in a blog post: “Stealer logs are more of a firehose of data that’s just constantly spewing personal info all over the place.”
“Once the bad guys have your data, it often replicates over and over again via numerous channels and platforms.”
Hunt urged individuals to verify whether they have fallen victim to the data hack.
He directed people to visit the Have I Been Pwned website to input their email address in the search field. It will thereafter inform you whether that email address and its associated passwords have been implicated in any breaches during the past ten years.
If you see your username listed, it is advisable to update the associated email password and contemplate using two-factor authentication.
A Google spokesman has communicated with the Sun, reaffirming that there has been no new breach.
The spokesperson said: “This report covers known infostealer activity that targets many different types of Internet activity.”
“There is not a new, Gmail-specific attack at play. We protect users from these attacks with layers of defenses, including resetting passwords when we come across credential theft like this.”
“We encourage users to boost their own defenses by turning on 2-step verification and adopting passkeys as a simpler and stronger alternative to passwords.”
Consequently, it is prudent to verify whether an email, regardless of its age, has been implicated in any of the numerous data breaches that have occurred over the years.
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