Billions of Banking and Social Media Credentials Available Online

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Content source

https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/billions-credentials-online/

According to new research from Digital Shadows, a 300% increase in stolen credentials from over 100,000 data breaches in the past two years means there are more than 15 billion credentials in circulation. These include credentials for bank accounts, social media and video streaming services.

Of these, more than five billion were assessed to be ‘unique’ – i.e. they have not been advertised more than once on criminal forums.

Rick Holland, CISO and VP of strategy at Digital Shadows, said: “The sheer number of credentials available is staggering and in just over the past 1.5 years, we’ve identified and alerted our customers to some 27 million credentials – which could directly affect them.

“Some of these exposed accounts can have (or have access to) incredibly sensitive information. Details exposed from one breach could be reused to compromise accounts used elsewhere.”