Hackers Trading For Email Credentials in Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail Leak

In a disturbing leak which reveals the extent of the email users' vulnerability to hacking, millions of private email account information belonging to Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, and Mail.ru users have been reportedly breached according to a IT Security firm.

Hold Security Inc. that the current breach is not linked to any previously publicized email leaks. Surprisingly, the company managed to acquire the data at no cost at all. Originally, their hacker source asked for 75 cents for the entire list. In the end, they got the data for free after agreeing to the hacker's demand of posting positive comments about him/her in a forum.

"When we peel back the layers and dig deeper, we find that the hacker is holding something back from us. Within several days of communication and after a couple more strategically timed votes on his social media pages, he shared more useful information," Hold Security said in an official statement.

"At the end, this kid from a small town in Russia collected an incredible 1.17 Billion stolen credentials from numerous breaches that we are still working on identifying. 272 million of those credentials turned out to be unique, which in turn, translated to 42.5 million credentials -- 15% of the total that we have never seen before."

What worries the company is the fact that these hackers seem all too willing to provide these almost for free.

"There are hacker sites that advertise 'brute forcing' popular services and store fronts by taking a large amount of credentials and running them one-by-one against the site," said Alex Holden, the firm's chief information security officer, as quoted by BBC News.

"What makes this discovery more significant is the hacker's willingness to share these credentials virtually for free, increasing the number of... malicious people who might have this information."

A summarized breakdown of the email account information breach is listed below as per Neowin report: Mail.ru- 57 million, Yahoomail- 40 million, Hotmail- 33 million and Gmail- 24 million

Since email users are rather inclined to using the same passwords they easily remember, the wide-scale hack could have far-reaching implications. As Engadget suggested, changing passwords frequently and turning on the two-factor authentication is a good way to start protecting yourself.