One of History’s Biggest Data Breaches Affects 16 Billion Accounts

Security researchers have found a massive trove of leaked data, including over 16 billion individual records, in what is reported to be among the largest data breaches ever discovered.

A recent study by Cybernews revealed that the leaked data was shared in 30 different databases, each of which was supposedly created with the help of different info-stealing malware variants. These malicious software programs, which are commonly used by hackers and, at times, by white-hat hackers to research, can be used to drain sensitive user information in infected devices.

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The leak is of epic proportions. Some of the data sets were rather small, with only a few million records, whereas others included billions of records. Stolen credentials for major platforms, including Google, Apple, GitHub, Telegram, and popular VPN services, are among the compromised information.

Alarmingly, of the total 30 datasets, only one, with 184 million records, had been published before in the press. However, this database, which is already large on its own, is just the tip of the iceberg of what was eventually discovered by the researchers, the Cybernews team added.

The researchers pointed out that these huge data breaches are increasingly becoming a common occurrence. The problem is that, they warned, new giant datasets are being discovered every few weeks, and infostealer malware and insecure data infrastructure are becoming increasingly dangerous.

Although the exposed databases were publicly available only within a short time until they were locked down, it is unclear who posted the data or who was in charge of it. It is also hard to determine the exact number of people affected because most of the records would overlap or be duplicated.

Considering that it is estimated that 5.5 billion people across the entire world have access to the internet today, the numbers are indicative that a large percentage of the world wide web population may have suffered multiple account breaches.

Security experts are still urging businesses and institutions to take stronger cybersecurity measures and carry out regular audits of their digital assets to prevent similar exposures in the future.

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