Check your's: More than 8.4 billion passwords of Internet users posted on Web

Ground Report | New Delhi: A file of about 100 GB in size was created as a result of various leaks and data breaches. All passwords are 6 to 20 characters long. However, the publication counted that the actual number of passwords was ten times less: 8,459,060,239 unique entries.

The new password collection was named RockYou2021. This is a reference to a massive data breach that occurred in 2009 called RockYou. Then the hackers broke into the servers of the social application site and obtained more than 32 million user passwords.

Today, the world's population is about 8 billion people, and about 4.7 billion are Internet users. The publication offered to check if user passwords are in the database, you can do this by following the link.

According to the author of the file, all passwords are between 6 and 20 characters long. He claims that the collection contains 82 billion passwords. However, CyberNews calculated that the actual number turned out to be almost ten times less - 8,459,060,239 unique records.

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Back in 2009, there was a huge data breach called RockYou. At the time, "attackers compromised the servers of the social application site and obtained over 32 million user passwords stored in plain text." The new collection of passwords is called RockYou2021.

Previously, the largest data breach involved 3.2 billion email / password combinations. The information was created based on existing data stolen from companies such as Netflix and LinkedIn. The new collection contains more than 8.4 billion passwords, while the population of our planet is less than 8 billion people, and the Internet users are only about 4.7 billion people. Chances are your passwords are also on this list.

By combining 8.4 billion unique password choices with other hack compilations that include usernames and email addresses, attackers can use the RockYou2021 collection to create a password dictionary and password attacks against countless online accounts. Since most people reuse their passwords across multiple applications and websites, the number of accounts affected by this leak could potentially reach millions, if not billions.

According to the Worldometer portal, the population of the Earth now exceeds 7.87 billion people. Thus, the number of leaked passwords exceeds the total number of inhabitants of the planet, which makes this fact the largest password leak in the history of mankind.

According to CyberNews calculations, the number of Internet users worldwide is within 4.9 billion people. Based on this, the probability of finding your password in the list is high and all Internet users are under attack.

It is noted that the appearance in the public domain of the RockYou2021 file can cause significant damage to privacy. Cybercriminals, for example, can combine 8.4 billion unique passwords from this file with other data from similar databases that were previously leaked. Also, this file can be used to create so-called "password dictionaries" that simplify brute-force attacks, hacking accounts using special software by brute-force passwords.

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Experts recommend reducing the likelihood of accounts being hacked after the RockYou2021 leak, primarily by changing passwords. It is best to use complex combinations, use different passwords for different services and store them in an offline password manager, and use two-factor authentication on all services where it is available. 

Earlier, in a series of serious data security breaches, more than three billion Gmail and Hotmail email and password combinations were leaked online.

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