Hackers Are Passing Around a Megaleak of 2.2 Billion Records

Andy Greenberg, reporting for Wired:

When hackers breached companies like Dropbox and LinkedIn in recent years—stealing 71 and 117 million passwords, respectively—they at least had the decency to exploit those stolen credentials in secret, or sell them for thousands of dollars on the dark web. Now, it seems, someone has cobbled together those breached databases and many more into a gargantuan, unprecedented collection of 2.2 _billion_ unique usernames and associated passwords, and is freely distributing them on hacker forums and torrents, throwing out the private data of a significant fraction of humanity like last year’s phone book.

You can (allegedly) safely check which of your accounts have been breached on Have I Been Pwned. Oh and if you aren’t yet doing so, I strongly recommend using a password manager, such as 1Password.