Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Millions of Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail Email Accounts Being Traded in Russian Underworld (reuters.com)

Posted by msmash on from the big-data-breach dept.

Eric Auchard, reporting for Reuters (edited and condensed): Hundreds of millions of hacked usernames and passwords for email accounts and other websites are being traded in Russia's criminal underworld, a security expert told Reuters. The discovery of 272.3 million stolen accounts included a majority of users of Mail.ru, Russia's most popular email service, and smaller fractions of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft email users (Editor's note: the numbers are: 57M Mail.ru, 24M Google, 40M Yahoo, and 33M Hotmail), said Alex Holden, founder and chief information security officer of Hold Security. [...] The latest discovery came after Hold Security researchers found a young Russian hacker bragging in an online forum that he had collected and was ready to give away a far larger number of stolen credentials that ended up totaling 1.17 billion records.Amir Efrati, a reporter with The Information, asks: "Industry seems to be failing at convince email users to do 2-step verification. Why not require it?"

3 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. Why don't we put an end to this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Why not sever the cables that connect Russia to the Internet until they crack down on the rampant crime online coming from their country? Can anyone give me a good reason why this shouldn't be done?

    I suspect I'll get downmodded to -1 so people can avoid the question and pretend like it's not here. Can anyone actually answer the question rather than evading it through moderation? I don't think Slashdot is capable of giving a good answer.

  2. ...and the sky is blue by campuscodi · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Thank God for Reuters.... otherwise we would have never found out. Ever since Reuters started a "security" news section this past winter, they're pointing out the most obvious things lately. Tomorrow's story is "malware infects Windows computer"

  3. Captain Obvious by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Exclusive: Big data breaches found at major email services - expert"

    Wow, no shit?? Bloomberg is really on the cutting edge of newsy stuff, like fer sure. Oooh, and their big discovery is "Exclusive" too.

    You could run this headline every day and it would be true. Has Bloomberg just discovered email and hackers and stuff?

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...