BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — It has been dubbed the "Mother of all Breaches".
Cybersecurity researchers discovered a database that contained more than 26 billion leaked data records.
Researchers have called it the biggest data breach found to date.
Just to get a sense of the breach’s scope, the newly discovered database contains over 3,800 folders, each containing records from an individual data breach. As such, it seems that these breached records were compiled over time to create this database, according to McAfee.
According to Forbes, records from users of X, Dropbox, Linkedin, Adobe, Canva and Telegram were all found in the database.
Many use these programs every day, so what do we do now and how can we protect ourselves and our data?
7 News took those questions to Western New York cybersecurity expert, Arun Vishwanath.
"The first thing you want to do is change your login. Change your password. What a lot of people do is take the password from what you're using on a different account. That's not what you want to do. You want to come up with a unique password; something that is memorable to you but new, so that you're not reusing it. The easiest way to do this is to accrue all of the accounts we have and have a password manager. The second thing we should all do is have a two-factor authentication. This is just basic cyber hygiene. Have unique passwords. Store those passwords so you can have a lot of unique ones. If your accounts have been compromised, check to see if your accounts have been compromised when going to these websites. Change your passwords. That gives you a level of protection," Vishwanath explained.
If you suspect you may have had your data leaked, you can always use the free leak checker tool on Have I Been Pwned at https://haveibeenpwned.com/ or if you feel as if your number may have been hacked, you can check Cyber News at https://cybernews.com/personal-data-leak-check/.
The leading cybersecurity expert also shared a few links for the sake of cyber hygiene. Those links can be found below:
