Over 700M Emails And Passwords Leaked By Spam Bot

Having one’s email login information stolen is bad enough, but it’s even worse when that information is leaked for everyone to see. This is exactly what happened when a notorious spam bot inadvertently released over 700 million emails and passwords, which effectively compromised the affected individuals’ financial information.

The leak was discovered by a hacker named Benkow, who is apparently based in Paris because the server hosting the information did not employ strong security measures. As a result, it was easily accessed by anyone who wanted to take a peek, BGR reports. All they would need is to know the IP address of the server, which has since been widely distributed.

Since then, cyber security experts have been studying the situation, with Troy Hunt of Have I Been Pwned? saying that it’s the single largest data dump in history. The server itself seems to be based in The Netherlands, but this doesn’t really say anything about the origin of the spam bot since hackers can easily go international.

More to the point, it would seem that the stolen information is related to a malware called Ursnif. It’s basically a Trojan, which has been known to target user information such as emails and passwords, along with banking accounts.

What really makes this development terrifying is how the data clumps also include SMTP credentials, Forbes reports. Benkow explains that in order for hackers to send out spam, they would need to have a considerable number of these credentials.

It’s worth pointing out that many of the emails and user information included in the data were already exposed in the past. This could provide hope that these users would have changed their passwords by now, which means that their information is secure. A lot of these profiles were apparently tied to LinkedIn and Facebook, as well.