Apple, Google, and other 16 billion login credentials were leaked, causing security concerns in the crypto industry

On June 19, Cointelegraph reported that more than 16 billion login credentials from major online service providers such as Apple, Google, and Facebook were compromised, a massive data breach that could have serious consequences for crypto holders. Login credentials are usernames and passwords (or other authentication information). According to a report released Friday, the Cybernews research team reviewed “30 exfiltrated datasets, each containing tens of millions to more than 3.5 billion records.” This data adds up to a “staggering 16 billion compromised login credentials.” According to the report, “with the exception of a ‘mysterious database’ containing 184 million records, which has been reported, the rest of the datasets have not been made public before.” Most databases contain an average of about 550 million records, and the smallest datasets have more than 16 million records. Cybernews warns that the data could be the “basis for a large-scale attack”, providing attackers with “a wealth of intelligence that is fresh and weaponizable”. Most data breaches are said to originate from unprotected Elasticsearch instances or object storage services.