According to Vilius Petkauskas of CyberNews, 30 datasets have been leaked. Each of these contains more than 3.5 billion records. He said, the number of leaked passwords and login credentials has reached 16 billion.

16 billion passwords and login credentials of Apple, Facebook, Google and many other companies have been leaked. This is considered to be the biggest leak in database history. Earlier in May, it was claimed that more than 18.4 crore passwords had been leaked. Cyber security researchers say that such a large scale password leak is believed to be the work of many groups.

According to Vilius Petkauskas of CyberNews, 30 datasets have been leaked. Each of these contains more than 3.5 billion records. He said, the number of leaked passwords and login credentials has reached 16 billion. This includes billions of login credentials of social media, VPN, developer portals and accounts of many major companies.

Blueprint for widespread abuse

Experts say that this is a blueprint for widespread exploitation. This can be used to log in to people's bank accounts and financial accounts. Most of the leaked data is in the format of URLs. This is followed by login and password. This can be used to hack any online service from Apple, Facebook, Google to HitHub, Telegram and various government services.

This is how the data might have been stolen

According to experts, data on this scale might have been stolen by many infostealing malware (software that steals sensitive information). Cyber criminals often use this malware and sell passwords and information on the dark web. The researchers also contacted the host provider who was storing crores of passwords in a text file. It is claimed that new large datasets emerge every few weeks, which indicate how dangerous the infostealer malware is. However, a lot of information in it can also overlap. Due to which the number of people actually affected cannot be estimated. 5.5 billion people have access to the internet, so it is believed that information of more than half the people has been leaked.

PC:Amar Ujala