As the world of technology becomes more advanced, so do the hackers as the biggest data breach looms.
Russian hackers have stolen close to 1.2 billion internet credentials from major US companies and retailers which has resulted in the biggest data breach in history.
A security firm, Hold Security stated that the hackers, “CyberVor” have collected confidential user names and passwords from over 420,000 websites.
“As long as your data is somewhere on the World Wide Web, you may be affected by this breach,” Hold said. “Your data has not necessarily been stolen from you directly. It could have been stolen from the service or goods providers to whom you entrust your personal information, from your employers, even from your friends and family.”
The hackers acquired databases of stolen credentials on the black market and then installed malware that allowed them to gain further access into websites and social media accounts.
To date, the security firm believes that over 1.2 billion unique sets of emails and passwords have been stolen from around the world.
The hackers have been traced back to South Central Russia and it is believed that there are just twelve hackers, all under the age of 25.
This latest security breach has raised concern over just how secure websites and social media platforms really are.
“This sounds all to familiar,” stated Mark Bower of Voltage Security. “Weakly secured sites, preventable vulnerabilities that aren’t patched, yet more evidence the bad guys are winning big at consumers expense.”
The breach was discovered just recently but at present, the affected sites cannot be named due to nondisclosure agreements.
One unnerving piece of information that was disclosed however, was that the breach effects both Fortune 500 companies and smaller websites.
As technology advances more and more, its inevitable that there will always be hackers or those attempting to infiltrate systems. While more often than not, hackers do it just for “fun” there is a security risk which should not be underestimated.
More information about the breach is expected to be released later this week. In the mean time, keep your passwords secure and avoid using the same login credentials for all sites.