773M Password ‘Megabreach’ is Years Old
Summary: A cache of nearly 773 million unique email addresses and 21 million unique passwords labeled "Collection #1" - about 87GB in size - was reported by Wired, The Guardian and Troy Hunt's HaveIBeenPwned as a major new breach, but KrebsOnSecurity found it was at least two to three years old. The seller, who goes by Sanixer on Telegram and offers the archive for $45, told Krebs it was a mix of older "dumps and leaked bases," and Hold Security CTO Alex Holden said the data first appeared on underground forums in October 2018 and is a subset of a larger tranche the seller prices at more than 4 terabytes.
Why it matters: The dump was priced at roughly .000002 cents per password, and Holden said his company had already derived 99 percent of the data from other sources - the volume is what made headlines, not its freshness or usefulness.
Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗
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