250 mn stolen Yahoo, Gmail, others being traded in Russian underworld
05 May 2016
Usernames and passwords for over 250 million stolen Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Hotmail, and other stolen accounts are being traded in Russia's criminal underworld, Reuters reports.
According to commentators it might be a good idea to update the password for one's email account.
The stolen accounts had been uncovered by Hold Security, where researchers found a Russian hacker, going by the name, ''the Collector,'' bragging that he was ready to ''give away'' these credentials, which totaled 1.17 billion records. The security company found the total number of compromised accounts to be 272.3 million after eliminating duplicates.
Russia's popular email service Mail.ru accounts for the largest number of compromised credentials - 57 million. Given that the service has 64 million monthly active users, the breach affects most of the company's user base.
The rest belong to other popular email clients including Yahoo Mail, with 40 million emails compromised; Microsoft Hotmail, with 33 million; and Gmail, with 24 million stolen credentials. Other credentials from email providers in Germany and China were also affected. It was not clear if any of these accounts had actually been breached.
Many of the emails were linked to employees of some of the largest US banking, manufacturing, and retail companies and Hold Security had been informing affected companies and organisations.
