Now may be a good time to change your passwords on social media.
Hackers have stolen two million usernames and passwords from at least 93,000 websites, including some of the largest social media sites including Facebook, Google, Twitter, LinkedIn and ADP, a payroll website dealing with the salaries of thousands of people worldwide.
The account information found includes 318,000 Facebook accounts, a total of 70,500 Gmail, Google and YouTube accounts, 59,500 Yahoo credentials and 21,700 Twitter login details.
According to security firm Trustwave, who first found the files, the breach affects users across the world in the UK, U.S., Russia, Germany, Singapore, Thailand, and more.
Security researcher Graham Cluley advises people to use different passwords for all their logins. “Thirty-forty percent of people use the same passwords on different websites. That’s certainly something people shouldn’t do,” he told CNN.
CNN reported yesterday that the cybersecurity firm Trustwave has traced the massive breach to a server in the Netherlands. Security experts said the confidential information on the server came from a piece of malware which recorded users’ keystrokes at login screens. Trustwave decided to analyze the date and find the most popular stolen passwords. Topping the list was “123456” and “password”, “admin,” and “123,” included in the top 10.
Graham Cluley, an independent security expert, said it is extremely common for people to use such simple passwords and also re-use them on multiple accounts, even though they are extremely easy to crack. “People are using very dumb passwords. They are totally useless,” he said.
Tech experts advise individuals to use certain precautions when selecting passwords. The first is never use sequential numbers or letters. It is best to use a combination of lower and uppercase letters along with numbers and symbols to make your password unique and harder to configure.
