Russian Hacker Leaks Massive Stash Of Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, And Gmail Passwords Online
Users of the Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and Gmail web email services should consider changing their passwords after a Russian hacker has offered a huge stash of email credentials online.
As reported by Yahoo Tech, the Russian hacker has stolen 272 million usernames and passwords to Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo email accounts and is offering them around in Russia’s criminal underworld. The hack also reportedly affects Mail.ru, the most popular email service in Russia, as well as several Chinese and German email providers.
The series of hacks was uncovered by Hold Security, a cybersecurity firm based in Milwaukee, who came across a young Russian hacker bragging in an online forum that he had gained access to 1.17 billion records and was ready and willing to give them away for just 50 roubles (around $0.76).
Russian hacker selling stolen email credentials – Tech Insider #cybersecurity https://t.co/D3ossYNJ9l
— Evan Kirstel (@evankirstel) May 5, 2016
However, according to Alex Holden, the founder and chief information officer of Hold Security, after eliminating duplicates, the cache of access information affects 272.3 million email accounts.
The company studies cyber threats played out in the chat rooms and forums that are part of the online criminal underground. Their employees reportedly speak to hackers in their native languages, all the while developing profiles of the individual criminals involved.
Holden said that while his company’s policy is to refuse to pay for stolen data, they eventually persuaded the hacker to give up the dataset to researchers at Hold Security for free as long as they posted favorable comments about him in the hacker forums.
Reportedly, this is one of the biggest stashes of stolen credentials uncovered since cyber attacks started hitting major U.S. banks and retailers around two years ago. In fact, thousands of the stolen passwords appear to belong to employees at some of the largest banking, retail, and manufacturing companies in the U.S.
Report: Russian hacker is trading email credentials for 272.3 million accounts https://t.co/UBau4zUWgX pic.twitter.com/TxXDY0QSq7
— Digital Trends (@DigitalTrends) May 4, 2016
Reportedly, Yahoo Mail access details comprised 15 percent of the unique IDs discovered, with Hotmail passwords making up 12 percent and Gmail 9 percent.
The security company warned that this stolen data could be used to engineer further cyber attacks, as many people tend to use the same passwords for multiple logins.
Besides giving access to the email accounts themselves, the contacts associated with each compromised account are also in danger, which multiplies the risks of damage to reputations and financial theft across the internet.
“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,” Holden told Reuters.
“These credentials can be abused multiple times.”
Reportedly, 10 days ago, Hold Security began informing the affected organizations. While the hacker has not yet been identified, he has been given the nickname “The Collector” due to the way he collected data from so many sources.
Talking Hotmail, a Microsoft spokesman said that stolen online credentials were an “unfortunate reality” in the digital age, saying, “Microsoft has security measures in place to detect account compromise and requires additional information to verify the account owner and help them regain sole access.”
The Russian email service Mail.ru told Reuters that after they were informed of the potential breach, they began checking whether any of the combinations of usernames and passwords were still active.
“As soon as we have enough information we will warn the users who might have been affected,” they added.
Reportedly, neither Google nor Yahoo has yet responded to Reuter’s requests for comment.
This isn’t the first time Holden has uncovered some of the world’s biggest data breaches, as he was previously instrumental in revealing breaches affecting tens of millions of users at Adobe Systems, JPMorgan, and Target.
While obviously not everyone has been targeted by the Russian hacker and nobody should panic just yet, everyone should immediately consider changing their password to avoid any possible problems.
[Photo via Flickr by Brian Klug, cropped and resized/CC BY-NC 2.0]
