
Cybercrime is a growing threat, with increasing attacks targeting individuals and organizations worldwide. One of the most concerning aspects is the theft and trade of passwords. Security researchers recently reported that an infamous crime marketplace has uploaded the world’s largest collection of stolen passwords labelled ‘RockYou2024’.
A hacker known as ‘ObamaCare’ posted a database containing nearly 10 billion unique passwords, collected from numerous data breaches and hacks over the years. This alarming news, therefore, highlights the increasing risks and the need for strong cybersecurity measures. Security researchers from Cybernews have uncovered the RockYou2024 password database. This happens to be the largest collection of stolen and leaked credentials ever seen on the BreachForums criminal underground forum. This database contains 9,948,575,739 unique passwords in plain text format.
Impact of the RockYou2024 Leak
RockYou2024 is a database that builds upon the previous RockYou2021 set. Approximately, 1.5 billion new passwords from 2021 to 2024 were added to the previous 8.4 billion. What’s worse is all the passwords are real-world passwords used by individuals and organizations worldwide. This increases the risk of credential stuffing attacks, where stolen credentials from one service are used on another unrelated service. Cyberattacks like this could lead to an overflow of data breaches, financial frauds, and identity thefts.
What You Can Do?
The biggest password leak of the RockYou2024 increases the risk of credential-stuffing attacks. People often use the same password for a lot of websites so when one gets compromised, they are at risk of getting hacked everywhere else too. You might be the next target or maybe you are a victim already and you have no idea about it yet! To know if you have been data breached check out sites like Have I Been Pwned which check your email against their databases of leaks.
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Furthermore, organizations and individuals should use security measures like multi-factor authentication (MFA) for better safety.
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