As 8 billion passwords leak online here are three things you must do right now
Last week it was revealed that a staggering amount of passwords have been exposed in a massive data leak. A text file, that was uploaded to the web, contained a total of 8.3 billion passwords with experts warning that this could be one of the biggest breaches in modern history. The attack was discovered by the team at CyberNews who say that due to the scale of the leak this issue is almost certain to affect a very large number of people. The data dump has been dubbed ‘RockYou2021’ by the hackers which appears to be in reference to the infamous RockYou data breach that occurred in 2009 where more than 32 million user passwords were leaked.
Speaking about the latest threat, CyberNews said: “By combining 8.4 billion unique password variations with other breach compilations that include usernames and email addresses, threat actors can use the RockYou2021 collection to mount password dictionary and password spraying attacks against untold numbers of online accounts.”
It’s clearly serious and, if you are worried about this threat, here are three things you must do today.
CHECK YOUR PASSWORDS
It’s a really good idea to see if your password has been leaked in any recent attacks. CyberNews and other sites, such as have i been pwned, offer a simple way of checking your details to see if they may be in the hands of hackers.
Google’s Chrome browser and Apple’s Safari can also help with both of these browsers showing if you have weak passwords.
