The report does not state how the hacker received these passwords, and whether all of these password entries are real.

Initially, the leaker stated there were 82 billion passwords on the forum, but researchers have found there are only 8,459,060,239 unique entries. Spotted by cybersecurity news website CyberNews (via BGR), the report claims this is the largest collection of leaked passwords of all time.

PSA: Stop using your phone number for two-factor authentication.

The passwords are all up to 20 characters long, and can easily be searched within the file. The forum user posted a 100GB TXT file and has dubbed the leak 'RockYou2021,' which is a reference to the RockYou data breach in 2009 that exposed 32 million user passwords in a similar manner. Exposed credentials could include private login information for Gmail, Facebook, Apple, Paypal, and more. What follows is the original story.Ī massive collection of passwords has leaked online, after a user posted 8.4 billion password entries onto a popular hacker forum. Specops notes hackers could use any of the 8.4 billion words and phrases in a brute force malicious attack, but this should not pose a greater risk than before the leak. This suggests the 100GB TXT file does not contain previously unknown breached passwords. According to Specops' research, the compilation of passwords leaked on the hacker forum is confirmed to be a combination of various words and phrases found on Wikipedia and other previously known leaked lists. Update on Thursday, June 10: Password protection experts at cybersecurity company Specops Software reached out to Laptop Mag providing further details about the 'RockYou2021' breached password leak.

User password hacking