Passwords Stolen
Image courtesy of chanpipat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Huge amount of usernames and passwords stolen
500 millions email addresses have been compromised, representing 1.2 billions usernames and passwords stolen by a Russian gang. The breach was discovered by Hold Security .The company did not reveal who exactly is affected, as it usually is the custom in the industry. Big players are involved, and you need to pay Hold security in order for them to recoup the costs, if you want to know if your company is affected.
How can you protect yourself?
One way to stay protected, is to use a password manager to create complex passwords. This allows to use different password for different sites and services. If one set of credential gets compromised, this does not affect the other services. This is however not of much value if your PC has been compromised, or if the email servers themselves have been compromised.
It looks like so far, the hacked email addresses are only being used for sending spam.
Sources