Historic Data Breach Exposes 16 Billion Credentials
Researchers have confirmed a record-breaking data breach that exposed 16 billion login credentials, including passwords for Apple, Google, Facebook, and other services.
According to Ukrinform, this was reported by Forbes.
Vilius Petkauskas from Cybernews, whose team has been investigating the breach since the beginning of the year, stated that «30 open datasets containing from tens of millions to over 3.5 billion records each» were discovered. In total, the number of compromised records reached 16 billion.
Researchers suspect that the massive leak of passwords is the work of several information thieves.
This breach of 16 billion records includes billions of login credentials for social networks, VPN services, developer portals, and user accounts from all major providers. According to researchers, this data has not appeared in previous leaks; it is new information. Only one dataset containing 184 million passwords was known before.
«This is not just a leak; it’s a plan for mass exploitation. This is not merely a rehash of old leaks; it’s fresh, operational intelligence suitable for military purposes on a large scale,» researchers said.
The article states that these credentials are a «zero point» for fitting attacks and account takeovers.
Most of this intelligence data was structured in a URL format, followed by login data and passwords. Researchers noted that the information contained opens the door to «virtually any online service,» from Apple, Facebook, and Google to GitHub, Telegram, and various government agencies.
«The fact that the credentials in question hold high value for widely used services has far-reaching implications,» said Darren Guccione, CEO and co-founder of Keeper Security.
He added that this is why it is crucial for consumers to invest in password management solutions and dark web monitoring tools.
As reported by Ukrinform, American companies Microsoft and OpenAI are investigating potential unauthorized access to data technologies from ChatGPT’s developer by a group associated with a Chinese AI startup, DeepSeek.
