Cybersecurity Shorts - In Hacking News: 3.2B Leaked Passwords Contain 1.5M Records and Ties to Government Emails

Findings from Syhunt, an application security assessment firm that helps organizations actively guard their mobile and web apps, reported recently on the biggest known compilation of password leaks by a hacker on an internet form. The 100GB data set, called COMB21 (a/k/a Compilation of Many Breaches) was published on an online forum on February 2, 2021 and the ties to government emails are, at best, alarming.

Online cybercrime forums are where hackers post passwords, links, and other information related to data breaches, and the COMB21 data set is one gigantic data set. This particular data set is the result of data pulled together from a variety of sources and comes from leaks and breaches of a variety of organizations (and government entities) over a fairly significant period of time. The potential impact is — significant. For starters, there were some 3.2 billion passwords from 2.18 million unique emails and 26 million email domains in the COMB21 data. This includes some 1.5 million world government emails and 625,000-ish U.S. government passwords. Gets your attention, doesn't it?

In its coverage of this breach, Syhunt pointed out the danger of deep learning tools being applied to the COMB leak, which increases the risk exponentially. Bottom line, 100 gigs of 3.2 billion leaked passwords, leading directly to government entities across the world is about as serious as it gets.