Russian hacking gang grabs more than one BILLION Internet account passwords

In what's believed to be the largest stockpile of stolen Internet credentials in history, a Russian hacking ring has gathered more than 1.2 billion unique Internet credentials, according to Web security experts. The relatively small group has reportedly collected passwords along with user names and email addresses.

"This year is already on track to be the year of the mega-mega breach," Orla Cox, director of security response for the anti-virus software company, Symantec.

The news was first reported by The New York Times, which says the group attacked all kinds of websites to steal data: large and small, and in countries from Russia to the U.S. and elsewhere.

Milwaukee-based Hold Security confirms to NPR it discovered the breach. The confidential material was gathered from more than 420,000 websites, ranging from small operations to those of major corporations.

Hold Security hasn't revealed which businesses are vulnerable, in part because of nondisclosure agreements and in part because many of their websites remain vulnerable. Security experts say it's unclear what the hackers will do with the data, so it's smart to go ahead and change your passwords.

"I think all Internet users should assume they've been impacted by this," says Cox. "Clearly these aren't opportunists, they aren't hobbyists. These are full time cyber-criminals they have been likely carrying this out for a number of months, maybe even years."

eddie wrote:Should I be worried?

Sassy wrote:

eddie wrote:Should I be worried?

Don't know Eds, I now have new lap top OH got me bless him after mine went bang and a pooter company is going to take all my pictures and writing off my old one if they can.   I'll be devastated if they can't, has all my pics of grandparents, daughters and son, Mum and Dad and grandchildren when they were tiny and are going to see if they can find out what happened.

Ben_Reilly wrote:Also a good reason to get an external hard drive -- they're not expensive and come in really handy for saving stuff you've got to keep regardless of your current hardware. But they do fail, I had a LaCie one that crapped out on me and I lost a lot of files ...

But I'd say yeah, be worried and look at it this way -- if one-seventh of the world population had internet access (which is not even close), one out of every seven people would be at risk. Right now I'm thinking it's closer to one-fourth. In fact, this is not even Ben who's posting this right now. My name's actually Ivan. Howdy!

eddie wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Also a good reason to get an external hard drive -- they're not expensive and come in really handy for saving stuff you've got to keep regardless of your current hardware. But they do fail, I had a LaCie one that crapped out on me and I lost a lot of files ...

But I'd say yeah, be worried and look at it this way -- if one-seventh of the world population had internet access (which is not even close), one out of every seven people would be at risk. Right now I'm thinking it's closer to one-fourth. In fact, this is not even Ben who's posting this right now. My name's actually Ivan. Howdy!

  

Hmmmm you sound a lot cleverer than that Ben anyway mate.

Ben_Reilly wrote:

eddie wrote:

Ben_Reilly wrote:Also a good reason to get an external hard drive -- they're not expensive and come in really handy for saving stuff you've got to keep regardless of your current hardware. But they do fail, I had a LaCie one that crapped out on me and I lost a lot of files ...

But I'd say yeah, be worried and look at it this way -- if one-seventh of the world population had internet access (which is not even close), one out of every seven people would be at risk. Right now I'm thinking it's closer to one-fourth. In fact, this is not even Ben who's posting this right now. My name's actually Ivan. Howdy!

  

Hmmmm you sound a lot cleverer than that Ben anyway mate.

Ben the admin here is Benny The Simpleton. Get it?