It’s time to change your passwords: 184 million Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc. accounts «leaked» to the Internet

If you haven’t changed the passwords of your main digital accounts in a while — now is a «great» opportunity to do so. Millions of Apple, Google, and Microsoft accounts and PayPal found in a huge database.

Jeremiah Fowler, Website Planet cybesecurity reporter , discovered a database on 184162718 of unique logins and passwords, totaling 47.42 GB of raw data. Fowler gained access to a limited sample of the data, where he found thousands of files containing email addresses, usernames, and passwords for many services, including major email providers, Microsoft products, Apple accounts, and social media accounts, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and more. Gaming sites were not left out of the hackers’ attention either — the database also contained Roblox credentials.

The journalist writes that he also saw the credentials of bank and financial accounts, medical platforms, and even government portals of a number of countries. He confirmed the authenticity of the data leak by sending emails to some of the addresses included in the database — saying that he was investigating the leak. The users confirmed that the data in the database did indeed match their actual passwords.

Unfortunately, he was unable to identify the person who posted the database. Although the associated IP address led to two domain names, one was unavailable and the other was displayed as unregistered and available for purchase. Fowler immediately took action and notified the hosting provider, who soon restricted public access to the database. The provider, however, refused to disclose the owner’s information.

It is unclear how long the database had been publicly available before Fowler discovered it. He says that the records contain numerous signs of data collection using malware specifically designed to harvest sensitive information from infected systems. Given that this breach was not limited to a single service and affected users around the world, we recommend changing passwords to important online services just in case.