Just after the recent iCloud leak of nude celebrity photos, another breach has surfaced, and this time, it threatens millions of Gmail users.
According to PCWorld, an archive with approximately five million Gmail addresses and passwords was posted on btcsec.com a few hours ago by a certain “tvskit” and was later on found on r/netsec on Reddit.
Several Reddit users confirmed the plain text accounts and passwords, but some entries were also found to correspond to an array of sites that are not directly connected to Gmail. This led experts to believe that the leak did not originate from Google, but had come from various sources. Moreover, some of the entries were about three years old, meaning that it’s not entirely a new hack.
Google has assured its users that their system has not been compromised, and that any attack on any Gmail account would be quickly dealt with. Still, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so take time to change your Gmail password as well passwords on other sites that you connect your Google account with, and take advantage of the two-step verification option.
