Millions of Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft accounts compromised by data breach

According to report by Reuters, a Russian hacker has obtained login credentials of millions of users from various email services. While the largest chunk appears to have come from Mail.ru users, millions of users with Gmail, Yahoo and Microsoft accounts are allegedly affected as well.

A total of 272.3 million accounts have been compromised making it one of the biggest stack of credentials which are now being sold in the Russian underworld market.

Hold Security discovered the breach when a young Russian hacker started bragging online about the treasure trove of data he had siphoned from various sources and after analysis they uncovered:

After eliminating duplicates, the cache contained nearly 57 million Mail.ru accounts - a big chunk of the 64 million monthly active email users Mail.ru said it had at the end of last year. It also included tens of millions of credentials for the world's three big email providers, Gmail, Microsoft and Yahoo, plus hundreds of thousands of accounts at German and Chinese email providers.

Moreover, it seems the hacker just wanted bragging rights as he asked for only 50 roubles (less than $1) for the entire dataset, with a condition that Hold Security would post good comments about him in hacker forums.

If we tabulate everything 24 million Gmail accounts stand compromised, while 40 million Yahoo and 33 million Microsoft accounts have also been affected. Its not just personal email addresses that have been affected, people use Gmail and Microsoft accounts for their work as well, which means this leak can have far more dire affects.

All we can suggest you at present is change your password and enable two-factor authentication to keep your account safe.

Source: Reuters