'Mother of all breaches': Massive data leak of 26 billion records from sites like Twitter, LinkedIn discovered

Security researchers have revealed that a massive database containing no less than 26 billion leaked records has been discovered on an unsecured page. Forbes claims that the "Mother of all Breaches" is perhaps the largest breach discovered to date. Sensitive data from a number of websites, including Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Twitter, is contained in the database.

According to Forbes' report, experts from Security Discovery and Cybernews found the breach, which has a size of up to 12 gigabytes. The research team thinks a malevolent actor or data broker assembled the database.

"Threat actors could leverage the aggregated data for a wide range of attacks, including identity theft, sophisticated phishing schemes, targeted cyberattacks, and unauthorised access to personal and sensitive accounts," the investigators stated.

Records of users from social media site Weibo and Chinese messaging behemoth Tencent are also included in the hacked data. There are other records from Telegram, Canva, and Adobe. The researchers stated that documents from several US and other government agencies can be located, which is concerning.

The good news is that the amount of fresh data in the database is rather little. According to the experts, it's more like assembled records from thousands of prior hacks and data thefts, as reported by Forbes.

The fact that it has many username and password combinations, on the other hand, is alarming. This data may be used by cybercriminals to launch targeted cyberattacks, complex phishing scams, identity theft, and unauthorised access to private and sensitive accounts.

In 2019, nearly one billion records were leaked from an unsecured database created by Verifications.io. At the time, it was one of the biggest and most damaging leaks ever.