Russian hackers stole over 1.2 billion personal records including Social Security numbers and credit card details, making it possibly the largest data breach ever. Security experts say change your passwords immediately, especially for banking and credit accounts, and use unique strong passwords for each service.
Russian hackers are being blamed for massive internet heist after they stole more than 1 billion name and password combinations. Good morning everyone, I'm Robert Jordan in for Steve Sanders.
And I'm Dina Bair. Thanks for joining us. Experts say it appears to be the largest data breach in history.
WG&J's Julian Cruz is joining us now from the newsroom with ways that you can use to protect yourself.
Julian? Bob, experts say if you haven't already changed your password, especially when it comes to critical bank or credit card accounts, change your password now because the criminal gang holding the stolen data could exploit your most sensitive personal information.
I recommend having different password for each account and they being strong passwords like uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and characters.
Robert Siciliano, an identity theft expert with Hotspot Shield, says that it's potentially the largest data breach in history. Dwarfing recent incidents like last year's data theft from Target, the Minneapolis-based retailer. To put this into perspective, Target lost an estimated 40 million credit cards to online hackers. The criminal gang in Russia reportedly holding 1.2 billion unique personal records, from stolen Social Security numbers to credit cards and email accounts. The data breach is being reported by Hold Security LLC, a cybersecurity firm in Milwaukee. Details of precisely who got hit not yet reported, but experts say expect to hear news in the weeks and months ahead as governmental organizations, big companies, small companies, and individuals start to discover that they've been hacked.
Well, here where major government organizations, corporate entities will all begin to discover that, that they have been breached as well.
Siciliano says you can protect yourself from cyber attacks. Change your password on the critical accounts. Change those passwords every 6 months. Set secure passwords. Don't use the same password for all your different accounts. Change it up. Use uppercase, lowercase. Be suspicious of unknown links or unusual requests, even if it comes from a familiar source. Now unfortunately, we are seeing the tip of the iceberg in this massive breach. Expect to hear about big companies in the weeks ahead reacting to the hackers. We will be hearing about collateral damage related to this incident for some time to come. In the newsroom, Julian Cruz, WGN News.
