Just a couple of weeks ago, we reported the Collection #1 data leak with over 770+ million email IDs and 20+ million passwords. Well, surprisingly, a Collection #2-5 is out that carries 2.2 billion usernames and passwords.
According to an online report, the Collection #2-5 includes 845GB of stolen data that contains more than 25 billion records. However, upon investigation, researchers revealed that many of the leaked accounts are duplicate and come from previous other leaks.
Nevertheless, the size of this leak is approximately three times of the Collections #1 dump.
The German based language website Heise.de was the first to report the new data leak and reports that the hackers took data from several small websites.
The Collections dump is available openly on torrent websites under the name of Mega upload link and hacker forums. A researcher from a security firm (phosphorus.io) reports that a torrent file he downloaded was already downloaded over 1,000 times.
How to check if your account credentials have been compromised?
Visit the Hasso Plattner Institute’s website that contains a tool to check if your username is amongst the leaked databases.
The renowned website HaveIBeenPwned by Troy Hunt has not yet been updated with the results of Collection #2-5. It does, however, contain full details from the Collections #1 dump.
The recent data leak highlights the importance of constantly changing the user ids and passwords, especially after a major hacking attempt. We also suggest users remove all third-party apps, tools, and extensions from their devices and enable two factor authentication layer to safeguard accounts to the maximum.