"A database containing 149 million account usernames and passwords-including 48 million for Gmail, 17 million for Facebook, and 420,000 for the cryptocurrency platform Binance -has been removed after a researcher reported the exposure to the hosting provider. The longtime security analyst who discovered the database, Jeremiah Fowler, could not find indications of who owned or operated it, so he worked to notify the host, which took down the trove because it violated a terms of service agreement."
"This is like a dream wish list for criminals because you have so many different types of credentials, Fowler told WIRED. An infostealer would make the most sense. The database was in a format made for indexing large logs as if whoever set it up was expecting to gather a lot of data. And there were tons of government logins from many different countries."
"In addition to email and social media logins for a number of platforms, Fowler also observed credentials for government systems from multiple countries as well as consumer banking and credit card logins and media streaming platforms. Fowler suspects that the database had been assembled by infostealing malware that infects devices and then uses techniques like keylogging to record information that victims type into websites."
A trove of 149 million account usernames and passwords was exposed and subsequently removed after notification to the hosting provider. The dataset included tens of millions of credentials for major services and hundreds of thousands for other platforms, plus government, banking, credit card, and streaming logins. The database appeared structured for large-scale indexing and continued to grow while the host was being notified. The dataset was hosted by a regional affiliate in Canada and is suspected to have been assembled by infostealing malware using techniques such as keylogging to capture victim input.
Read at WIRED
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]