The leaked database contains records from several different services.
With 26 billion records, the database consists of people’s sensitive data. Illustration image. Annette Riedl
A huge leaked database has been found online, which is described as the “mother of all data breaches”. The 12 terabyte database contains up to 26 billion records, which is Cybernews according to a larger amount than in previously seen data leaks.
The database was discovered by a security researcher Bob Dyachenko together with the Cybernews team.
According to Cybernews, the owner of the database is unlikely to ever be found out, but it is believed to be someone who finds it useful to store huge amounts of data. Thus, the background of the database may be a hacker, a data trader or a service that processes huge amounts of data.
The massive database appears not to have been assembled from recently stolen data, but rather a combination of data stolen in several different data breaches.
According to security researchers, the database is still very dangerous, as hackers are able to use it for a variety of attacks, such as identity theft, sophisticated phishing, targeted cyber attacks and hacking into user accounts.
The researchers point out that a significant part of leaked data contains, in addition to usernames, people’s sensitive information, which makes them valuable to cybercriminals.
Cybernews notes that while its team identified more than 26 billion records in the database, the database may also contain duplicates.
The database contains data from several different online services. 1.4 billion records originate from the Chinese messaging app Tencent QQ. In addition, the leaked data includes Weibo, MySpace, Twitter, Deezer, LinkedIn, Adobe, Canvas, Dropbox and Telegram.
In addition, there is information on government organizations from, for example, the United States, Germany, Brazil and Turkey.