Russian hackers stole 1.2 billion passwords – BBC Russian

Hold Security Company does not name names of the victims

American company Hold Security, specializing in the field of information security, argues that a group of Russian hackers managed to draw the world’s largest database of usernames and Internet users.

In dataset included 1.2 billion of stolen passwords and usernames, as well as more than 500 million e-mail addresses. This information was obtained from 420 thousand Internet sites, the company said.

Hold Security called it “the biggest data leak in history”.

Hold Security does not name the names of the victims, citing nondisclosure agreement and unwillingness to give companies whose sites are still vulnerable.

“Their goal was not only big companies, they collected data from all the sites that came their victims”, – stated in the report of .

first wrote about this the largest data breach American newspaper New York Times. She said that at her request expert unrelated to Hold Security, analyzed data stolen and confirmed their authenticity.

“Another expert on computer crime are aware of these, but could not discuss them publicly. He said that some big companies know that the data on them were among the stolen information “- the newspaper said.

The article states that the group of hackers consists of about a dozen people at the age of about 20 years, who know each other personally. Their servers are based in Russia.

Hold Security, which was previously reported attacks on Adobe’s and Target, said that it took her seven months to study the extent of these attacks.