Data breaches are seemingly commonplace these days and something we need to always be prepared for. Yahoo has had serious problems with them over the last year, with over 1 billion customer accounts exposed.
Now, a massive data breach has been discovered, exposing hundreds of millions of email addresses and passwords.
Has your personal information been breached?
A researcher, who goes by the name Benkow, recently discovered an unsecured server exposing email addresses and passwords. The data breach is massive, containing over 711 million unique email addresses.
Spammers are using the stolen credentials in a large-scale malware operation. The “Onliner spambot” spreads a banking Trojan dubbed Ursnif.
What’s happening is, victims are receiving spam emails with normal-looking attachments. When the attachment is opened, your gadget is infected with malware. If your gadget is infected with the Ursnif malware, scammers can steal your usernames and passwords to online accounts as well as sensitive credit card information.
Email filters are more sophisticated and better at filtering spam these days. That’s why cybercriminals have started using spambots, which help bypass those filters.
Benkow said, “To send spam, the attacker needs a huge list of SMTP credentials. The more SMTP servers he can find, the more he can distribute the campaign.”
Keep reading to learn about safety steps you must take immediately.
Check to see if your email address is in the breach
