Large Data Leak Exposes 8.4B Passwords; How To Check If Your Credentials Were Leaked – By Nica Osorio (IB Times) / June 10 2021
KEY POINTS
- A new leak exposed a staggering number of online users’ credentials
- The new leak is called RockYou2021
- The massive password leak could be used by malicious actors
Billions of passwords were recently leaked on a hacker forum, exposing online user’s credentials that could include private login information for Paypal, Apple, Gmail, Facebook and a lot more.
A 100 GB text file with a staggering 8.4 billion password entries was posted on a popular hacker forum, CyberNews reported Monday. It contained passwords taken from previous leaks and breaches. This reportedly was the largest compilation of leaked passwords.
The file containing the leaked data was dubbed RockYou2021, presumably a reference to the RockYou data breach that happened in 2009. Back then, malicious actors hacked their way into servers of social media sites and acquired over 32 million user passwords. Interestingly, while the leaker claimed that there were 82 billion passwords in the text file, researchers discovered that it had only 8,459,060,239 unique entries.
