Last week, the FBI caught the hackers who stole 500 million Yahoo emails back in 2014. But that’s Yahoo’s problem, right? Not so fast. Because a new crises reveals and involves Gmail and Yahoo emails. This is a security alert: Emails for sale by underground market.
So 20 over million Gmail and over 5 million Yahoo email accounts are for sale. An underground vendor calling himself, “”SunTzu583” listed the emails. But now, he’s promoting them to the cyber criminal world. What is his price? He offers the Gmail accounts, all 20 million of them, for only $450. That’s less thank half a Bitcoin. But if you want the 5 million Yahoo email accounts, those will only cost $250. That’s around a quarter Bitcoin.
So what exactly will a criminal get? He’ll get email addresses, and more to the point, he’ll get passwords. We can thank a Hack Read report for this security alert. Sun Tzu got the defunct emails from My Space, Adobe and Linkedin data branches. However, the vendor says not all the passwords and accounts work, so they should be careful which ones they try. Aw, a cyber crook with a heart (yes, I say that will all the sarcasm I can muster). Who ever thought?
But such cyber attacks threaten the IT support community every day. All I can do is tell you what our Boston computer service shop people tell customers. Make strong passwords. Also, don’t use the same one for every account. And change them often. Furthermore, get anti-virus protection for your system, whether it be a desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. You can get such protection for free, and add layers of protection for a small fee. Also, it’s always good to read up on every security alert you can. Arm yourself with knowledge. Ignorance is not bliss. Not only that, ignorance can wipe you out! The cyber criminals are getting smarter. Shouldn’t you?