Media reports: Massive data breach of popular sites involves 26 billion accounts

Jan. 23, 2024
Several media sources are reporting that a massive data breach discovered by researchers has comprised as many as 26 billion records from several countries involving many popular websites.

Several media sources are reporting that a massive data breach discovered by researchers has comprised as many as 26 billion records from several countries involving many popular websites.

Cybernews.com reported the “supermassive leak” contains data from numerous previous breaches, comprising 12 terabytes of information. The leak, which contains LinkedIn, Twitter, Weibo, Tencent, and other platforms user data, is almost certainly the largest ever discovered, the news website reports.

The website says while the leaked dataset contains mostly information from past data breaches, it almost certainly holds new data, that was not published before.

Cybernews.com says there are potentially hundreds of millions of records from Weibo (504M), MySpace (360M), Twitter (281M), Deezer (258M), Linkedin (251M), AdultFriendFinder (220M), Adobe (153M), Canva (143M), VK (101M), Daily Motion (86M), Dropbox (69M), Telegram (41M), and many other companies and organizations.

The leak also includes records of various government organizations in the US, Brazil, Germany, Philippines, Turkey, and other countries, the website says.

According to a research team working with the website, the consumer impact of the supermassive MOAB could be unprecedented. As Cybernews.com points out, many people reuse usernames and passwords, malicious actors could embark on a tsunami of credential-stuffing attacks.

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Staff Reports

Editorial and news reports authored by the media team from Cygnus Security Media, including SecurityInfoWatch.com, Security Technology Executive magazine and Security Dealer & Integrator (SD&I) magazine.