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Protect yourself, data after massive data leak

Nearly 10B passwords exposed on hacking site

By: Betty Fin-Fisher
USA Today

..... In what could be the largest password leak of all time, researchers at Cybernews have discovered a file with nearly 10 billion passwords posted to a hacking site in a data dump called RockYou2024.
..... "The Cybernews team believes that attackers can utilize the ten-biooion-stron RockYou2024 compilation to target any system that isn't protected against brute-force attacks.
..... This includes everything from Online and off-line services to Internet-facing cameras and industrial hardware, " the Online publication said in a report.
..... The report said the file was uploaded by a user named Obama care on July 4 [2024] and contains 9,948,575,739 unique plain-text passwords. However, the 10 billion passwords included in the file are not all new.
..... Cybernews said its team "cross-referenced the passwords include in the RockYou2024 leak with data from cybernews' Leaked Password Checker, which revealed that these passwords came from a mix of old and new data breaches."
..... The passwords on the document have likely been collected from more than 4,000 databases over the past 20 years, Cybernews said.
..... Three years ago, a leak of 8.4 million passwords called RockYou2024 was posted on a hacker site. It was the largest password leak at that time. Cybernews said its analysis determined that the 10 billion leaked passwords of RockYou2024 included 1.5 billion new password leaks form 2021 through 2024.
..... The recent wave of hacks targeting several sites, including Ticketmaster, was the result of credential stuffing attacks, said Cybernews.

'This needs to be a wake-up call'

..... Although most of the 10 billion passwords leaked are a series of data dumps from previous hacks and are not new, it is still a big deal to have that many passwords in one document posted on the Internet, said Scott Augenbaum, a retired FBI agent, cybercrime prevention trainer and author of"The Secret of Cybersecurity."
..... "The big moral of the story is this needs to be a wake-up call that no matter what a great job you do keeping yourself safe, someone;s going to lose your user name and password," Augenbaum told USA Today, referring to companies whose sites are hacked.
..... On Friday [07/12/2024] AT&T announce a massive data breach exposing call and text records of about 109 million customers.
..... In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the telecom giant said it discovered in April [2024] that hackers had illegally downloaded the data from nearly all of tis cellar customs to "a third-party cloud platform."
..... The company said the compromised data did not include customers names or other personal information such as Social Security numbers or birth dates, however it noted there are often ways, using publicly available Online tools, to find the name associated with a specific telephone number.
..... The danger is that many people use very common passwords, Augenbaum said. Or if they're using a more difficult password or passphrase, they use the same one for multiple accounts. When those password are compromised, hackers can get into multiple accounts he said.
..... "The password are out there," he said. "that means the cybercriminals right now are banking on the fact that they're going to capture one of your passwords. Are you using that same password for multiple platforms?"
..... Augenbaum said he is particularly worried about the senior population which is more likely to use the same password and could be vulnerable to scammers.
..... It's important to have a different password for each account, he stressed.
..... "This has an impact because just think about how many of our parents have the same password for multiple platforms, or even our kids," he said. "This will have a greater ripple effect across consumers than anyone could imagine."

How to protect yourself

..... Immediately change passwords for all accounts associated with the leaked password, Augenbaum said.
..... Ensure each password is strong and unique, Augenbaum said. A good password should be at least 12 characters long and include a mix of letters, numbers, and symbols.
..... Here are other ways Augenbaum advises consumers to protect themselves:

* Enable two-factor authentication: where ever possible, enable 2FA, which prompts you to verify yourself on a second device. This adds an extra layer of security by requiring an additional verification step beyond your password.

* Use a password manager: Utilize password-manager software to securely generate and store complex passwords. This reduces the risk of password reuse across different accounts.

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