Password breaches are among the most egregious cybersecurity violations out there, but in spite of the fact that this is the case they only seem to be occurring more and more frequently. A cybersecurity company by the name of SpyCloud recently put out a study that revealed the true extent of password stealing, and the findings in this study indicate that things are not getting all that much better than they used to be.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that around 721.5 million passwords ended up being stolen just in 2022 alone. Around half of these stolen passwords came from networks of malware called botnets, and they tend to be able to steal far more passwords and credentials than might have been the case otherwise.
Infostealers are available for malicious actors to buy as a service from other cybercriminals. They can cause a huge uptick in credential stealing, but it should also be mentioned that the victims of these breaches might also be at least partly to blame with all things having been considered and taken into account.
It was found that 72% of the password breaches that occurred last year involved using the exact same passwords as before. Ideally, if your password ends up getting stolen, it’s best to change it to something different and more secure. However, this study shows that people are just not doing enough to protect themselves, and it can be argued that this is making the problem far worse than it actually needs to be.
The study also discovered various other forms of data other than passwords that were just as private if not more so. For example, over 67 million credit card details were also found, as were around 1.4 billion full names for people online.
All in all, around 8.6 billion individual pieces of stolen personal information were discovered on the dark web. Consumers need to do more to protect themselves by replacing easy passwords and using complex phrases that are far harder to crack through brute force and the like.
Read next: Scams Are Getting Way More Dangerous Due to ChatGPT
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that around 721.5 million passwords ended up being stolen just in 2022 alone. Around half of these stolen passwords came from networks of malware called botnets, and they tend to be able to steal far more passwords and credentials than might have been the case otherwise.
Infostealers are available for malicious actors to buy as a service from other cybercriminals. They can cause a huge uptick in credential stealing, but it should also be mentioned that the victims of these breaches might also be at least partly to blame with all things having been considered and taken into account.
It was found that 72% of the password breaches that occurred last year involved using the exact same passwords as before. Ideally, if your password ends up getting stolen, it’s best to change it to something different and more secure. However, this study shows that people are just not doing enough to protect themselves, and it can be argued that this is making the problem far worse than it actually needs to be.
The study also discovered various other forms of data other than passwords that were just as private if not more so. For example, over 67 million credit card details were also found, as were around 1.4 billion full names for people online.
All in all, around 8.6 billion individual pieces of stolen personal information were discovered on the dark web. Consumers need to do more to protect themselves by replacing easy passwords and using complex phrases that are far harder to crack through brute force and the like.
Read next: Scams Are Getting Way More Dangerous Due to ChatGPT
