5 Million Gmail accounts hacked and passwords leaked to a Russian site

Gmail accounts of nearly 5 million users login credentials have been leaked in a recent cyber attack. The leaked usernames and passwords are published on a Russian Bitcoin forum.

There are rumors that many of the credentials are old and were leaked a long time ago but yet others claim that 60 % of passwords are still in use. Not only Google but a popular search engine Yandex’ user credentials were also leaked during this attempt. However, Google representatives have announced that there has not been a breach in their systems, but this is rather a phishing attempt where user passwords were stolen over a period of years.

The database of the user names and passwords were posted on the btsec.com site which is a Russian language Bitcoin security forum. A publisher by the name tvskit posted the screenshot of the database claiming to be containing active Gmail accounts.

You can check to see if your Gmail account is among the leaked document at isleaked.com/en. On the other hand you could also safely change your password for security reasons if you hesitate to provide your user credentials to an online site.

With such issues arising frequently, a secured password is necessary and also enabling two-factor authentication is a good practice