While you’re busy planning your holidays, clearing your leaves and shopping for some Christmas gifts, here’s something you might want to add to your list of things to do – change your passwords for basically all the major services you use on the internet like Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo and more. It has recently been reported that a hacker has stolen about 2 million credentials from these major services using a keylogger malware and it affects users worldwide, from 92 countries to be precise.
As reported by a web security firm Trustwave, these information have been stolen over the past couple of months with the help of a malware called Pony. They have analyzed all the data and broken down the numbers:
- 1,580,000 website login credentials
- 320,000 email account credentials
- 41,000 FTP account credentials
- 3,000 Remote Desktop credentials
- 3,000 Secure Shell account credentials
Among the web services, the most compromised websites (listed in order) are Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn. CNNMoney reports that some web services like Facebook, ADP, LinkedIn and Twitter have already reset passwords for compromised users and informed them while the rest like Google and Yahoo! have yet to respond.
Finally, before you head on to those sites to change your password, do give your computer a scan for any “ponies”. More information about the hack available on Trustwave.
