YOUR personal data could be at risk after cybersecurity experts discovered what’s potentially the biggest breach of all time.
The huge data breach involves 26 billion records.
Bob Dyachenko, the owner of SecurityDiscovery.com, and Cybernews are credited with the shocking discovery.
Cybernews has described it as a “supermassive leak” and the “Mother of all Breaches” or MOAB for short.
It involves data from popular apps including Twitter, Weibo, MySpace, LinkedIn, Adobe, MyFitnessPal, JD.com, and more.
The researchers believe this is the biggest data leak ever discovered.
They found the stolen records on an unsecured website.
It’s thought the culprit behind the break may never be discovered but could cause a tidal wave of cybercrime.
The researchers said, “The dataset is extremely dangerous as threat actors could leverage the aggregated data for a wide range of attacks, including identity theft, sophisticated phishing schemes, targeted cyberattacks, and unauthorized access to personal and sensitive accounts.”
Cybernews suggests the person storing this data could be a “malicious actor, data broker, or some service that works with large amounts of data.”
Although 26 billion stolen data records have been found, it is possible that some are duplicates.
The data hasn’t been described in detail but is said to be sensitive and valuable to cybercriminals.
Chinese instant messaging app Tencent QQ has been the most affected with a total of 1.4 billion records stolen, according to the researchers.
The leak is also said to involve data from various government organizations in the US, Brazil, Germany, Philippines, and Turkey, as well as other countries.
According to the experts, the impact of this could be unprecedented.
The researchers said, “If users use the same passwords for their Netflix account as they do for their Gmail account, attackers can use this to pivot towards other, more sensitive accounts.
“Apart from that, users whose data has been included in supermassive MOAB may become victims of spear-phishing attacks or receive high levels of spam emails.”
The best thing to do if you’re worried about your data is to change your passwords for important accounts.
Be vigilant when looking out for any suspicious activity on your social media or banking apps and be wary of phishing emails.
The following websites and apps are said to be affected...
