Usernames and passwords for more than 360 million MySpace accounts have been stolen from the social network and are being sold online, according to a breach database provider.
LeakedSource, which allows users to pay for subscriptions to its database of breached personal data, said the MySpace data was provided to it by one of its users.
The data set contains 360,213,024 records, with more than 111 million of the records containing a username and more than 68 million containing a secondary password, LeakedSource said.
According to the site, the passwords were stored using SHA1 algorithm, which is considered relatively easy to decrypt, and didn’t use “salting”, a technique that involves the addition of random data to make decryption more difficult.
“The methods MySpace used for storing passwords are not what internet standards propose,” LeakedSource said.
Only a few thousand of the passwords were over 10 characters in length, while almost none contained an upper-case character, according to the site. Some contained a “1” at the end, suggesting MySpace required passwords to contain a number, according to LeakedSource.
Popular passwords included “password1”, “abc123” and “123456”, the site found.
Last week LeakedSource said it had obtained a copy of 117 million password records stolen from social network LinkedIn in 2012 and which were being offered for sale online.
LinkedIn said at the time that the breach had only affected about 6.5 million user accounts, and required a password reset for those accounts only, meaning that another 110.5 million accounts may still be vulnerable.
The business networking site said it was forcing a password reset for the affected accounts.
Following the latest LinkedIn incident, Microsoft last week forced all users to upgrade their passwords, and banned the use of common credentials (such as “password”) across all its sites.
Such credentials have been banned on Hotmail since 2011.
MySpace did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Another day, another security breach. However this time, it’s being named the biggest breach to date, with more than 360 million usernames and passwords stolen. It begs the question: is any organisation safe from being the next target? Probably not.
Monitoring the dark web for compromised accounts allows a company to be alerted that it has been hacked before the breach becomes public knowledge. This gives the company time to prepare a public statement and have the users change their credentials, mitigating further damage from occurring. What’s more, normal cyber defences are not enough; it’s about being proactive, rather than simply reactive. Testing the security of the whole business – from the perimeter all the way through to employee awareness training – coupled with the advanced warning provided by constant monitoring, saves crucial time, protects reputation and gives the CISO a better nights sleep.