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In a major hacking, according to Trustwave, hackers have compromised about 2 million(combined) Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, Yahoo, Odnoklassniki, LinkedIn and ADP accounts, including usernames and passwords. The massive hacking was a result of the "Pony malware" installed maliciously on an unknown number of computers all over the world. Trustwave SpiderLabs have provided the numbers of the hacked data:
- 1,580,000 website login credentials stolen
- 320,000 email account credentials stolen
- 41,000 FTP account credentials stolen
- 3,000 Remote Desktop credentials stolen
- 3,000 Secure Shell account credentials stolen
Abby Ross, a spokesperson for Trustwave has stated:
Although these are accounts for online services such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google, this is not the result of any weakness in those companies networks,"
"Individual users had the malware installed on their machines and had their passwords stolen. Pony steals passwords that are stored on the infected users' computers as well as by capturing them when they are used to log into web services.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, they've changed the passwords of the compromised accounts. He stated that the security breach is not the issue of the website, but the malware was installed in the computers of the compromised accounts. How so many computers got the virus, is unknown.
Twitter, ADP and LinkedIn also changed the passwords of the compromised accounts and notified the users.
The hacker(s) remain unknown. What IS known, is that compromised or not, if you have an easy password, now is a good time to change it to something hard, such as one which uses more than one type of input(alphabets, numbers, e.t.c) and many characters, and keep your anti-viruses up-to-date!
Muhammad Junaid
Muhammad Junaid is the writer of Entertainment Ghost. He writes articles, reviews, previews and entertainment news about gaming, technology, the media and so on. You can follow him on Twitter @Mr_MJunaid and Facebook MJunaid
