A database of 26 billion leaked records has been discovered called the “Mother of all Breaches.” Cybersecurity researcher Bob Dyachenko and the team at Cybernews found a huge 12-terabyte leak. The database contains both credentials and sensitive data, but it’s not clear who is responsible for it.
Having your personal data exposed online is bad news. It can be used for nefarious purposes. However, the situation is not as disastrous as it seems.
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The leak is a collection of data from previous breaches and doesn’t seem to have new information. If you have updated your security, you shouldn’t be more worried than before. Some records may be duplicated, so there might not be 26 billion unique records.
However, this doesn’t mean you can relax. With the vast amount of data and leaks that exist, there is a high possibility that your data is included, even if it is from a breach you were already aware of that happened years ago. This serves as a good reminder to improve your security practices and consider changing some of your passwords.
Tencent was most affected with 1.5 billion records leaked. It was followed by Weibo with 504 million, MySpace with 260 million, Twitter with 281 million, and Wattpad with 271 million. Other impacted brands include LinkedIn, AdultFriendFinder, Adobe, MyFitnessPal, and Canva.
Government organizations in the US, Brazil, Germany, Turkey, and the Philippines were also affected and included in the database reported by mashable.