In October of this year, security researcher Vinny Troia stumbled upon an unsecured server that was leaking a stupendous amount of personal data —1.2 billion records with a combined size of 4 terabytes. The data includes information from hundreds of millions of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Github and other social media profiles, and includes 622 million unique email addresses and 50 million phone numbers.
Troia stated that “this is the first time I’ve seen all these social media profiles collected and merged with user profile information into a single database on this scale,” adding that the information could make it possible for cybercriminals to “impersonate people or hijack their accounts.” What makes this leak extra disturbing is that it is not clear who this database belongs to and for what purpose the owners have been harvesting data.
Read more: 1.2 Billion Records Found Exposed Online in a Single Server
