A Russian crime ring has reportedly amassed more than 1.2 billion stolen username and password combinations in addition to more than 500 million email addresses. Discovered by Hold Security and first reported by the New York Times, the data breach apparently affected more than 420,000 websites, making it probably the largest incident of data theft to date.
In recent years, as consumers share information with more and more websites, large-scale data breaches have become a worryingly common occurrence. As recently as May, eBay asked 145 million users to change their passwords, after the company’s database had been successfully attacked by hackers.
Our chart shows how many data records have been compromised in some of the most prominent examples of data theft in recent years.
