1.4 trillion passwords

An incredibly large database for cybercriminals has been discovered on an underground forum. This 41 GB database contains 1.4 trillion login credentials that have been passed around the Internet in bare text. The database has also already appeared on a number of torrent sites and on the Dark Web. This paves the way for uneducated and new hackers to own a treasure chest of data, so to speak, without knowledge or special actions. This is alarming as cybercrime is on the rise.

4iQ is the first party to stumble across the file on the Dark web while searching for stolen, leaked or lost data. The 41GB file is the largest collection of login data found to date. It is a collection of previous leaks along with still unknown combinations of passwords and usernames. In these lists, user and password combinations are indexed so that they can be quickly searched for manually or by means of supplied scripts/ tools. Leaks such as those from Linkedin and Yahoo earlier this year are included.

Keeping your hosting secure

To keep your hosting and web hosting secure, it is important to maintain a discipline by keeping up with security standards. This includes knowing what you are doing when it comes to hashing and storing passwords and personal information. If you are using a Content Management System such as WordPress hosting then it is important to always keep the CMS up to date.

What are the implications?

What is learned from password lists are also the patterns people make across different websites. When you have 1 password and a few variations of it for all your other logins you are unconsciously creating a pattern. This pattern is now being studied by people who want to abuse it and people who want to protect themselves against it. However, as long as you are making up passwords, then the same thing can often be used unconsciously. Especially by people who are not in the field. Through our Web Application Firewall we try to prevent this as much as possible. By already catching the combinations like admin admin and so on.

The database makes it possible to look up 226,631 combinations with the username admin, administrator or root within a few seconds. Which many people leave by default when installing a CMS hosting or modem. The data is sorted alphabetically and provides suggestions for common patterns.

However, many of the discovered username and password combinations from this gigantic list are already longer known. However, some 385 million unique combinations have been added. These are only preliminary figures since the list was only discovered on December 5, 2017. Research into the list’s origins and data is therefore still ongoing. Keep an eye on the news for the latest developments on this. Use strong and unique passwords for your hosting to protect it with the password generator. Your hosting can include your email address, database passwords and FTP accounts.