According to a recent report from Reuters, a major data breach of usernames and passwords has compromised more than 270 million email accounts, mostly from Russia’s Mail.ru email service. However, some of the hacked credentials came from accounts belonging to other popular email services, including Gmail, Hotmail, and Yahoo Mail.
The breach was discovered after researchers from Hold Security, an information security consulting firm, interfaced directly with the Russian hacker via an online forum. The hacker was reportedly attempting to sell or trade the data for positive reviews on his profile across other hacker sites. Hold Security was able to promise favorable comments and convinced the hacker to give up the dataset.
Email service providers have been notified about the breach and are planning to examine the list of credentials to determine how many of their active users may have been affected.
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