Collection 1 Data Breach Exposes More Than 772 Million Email Addresses

A collection of almost 773 million unique email addresses and just under 22 million unique passwords were exposed on cloud service MEGA. Security researcher Troy Hunt said the collection of data, dubbed Collection #1, totaled over 12,000 separate files and more than 87GB of data. ZDNet reports: 'What I can say is that my own personal data is in there and it's accurate; right email address and a password I used many years ago,' Hunt wrote. 'In short, if you're in this breach, one or more passwords you've previously used are floating around for others to see.' Some passwords, including his own, have been 'dehashed', that is converted back to plain text. Hunt said he gained the information after multiple people reached out to him with concerns over the data on MEGA, with the Collection #1 dump also being discussed on a hacking forum. 'The post on the forum referenced 'a collection of 2000+ dehashed databases and Combos stored by topic' and provided a directory listing of 2,890 of the files,' Hunt wrote.
The collection has since been removed. You can visit Hunt's Have I Been Pwned service to see if you are affected by this breach.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.