10 billion passwords have been leaked on a hacker site. Are you at risk?

10 billion passwords have been leaked on a hacker site. Are you at risk?, In the latest cybersecurity scare, a file with nearly 10 billion passwords has been posted to a hacking site.

Researchers at Cybernews said they discovered the file, posted on July 4, with 9,948,575,739 unique plaintext passwords.

Cybernews experts said they believe this data dump, called RockYou2024, is the largest password leak of all time.

"The Cybernews team believes that attackers can utilize the ten-billion-strong RockYou2024 compilation to target any system that isn’t protected against brute-force attacks. This includes everything from online and offline services to internet-facing cameras and industrial hardware," the online publication said in a report.

The 10 billion passwords included in a file uploaded by a user named ObamaCare are not all new, Cybernews said.

Cybernews said its team "cross-referenced the passwords included in the RockYou2024 leak with data from Cybernews’ Leaked Password Checker, which revealed that these passwords came from a mix of old and new data breaches."

The passwords on the document have likely been collected from more than 4,000 databases over the last 20 years, Cybernews said.

“In its essence, the RockYou2024 leak is a compilation of real-world passwords used by individuals all over the world. Revealing that many passwords for threat actors substantially heightens the risk of credential stuffing attacks,” Cybernews said.

Credential stuffing is when hackers take information, such as passwords, from one data leak and attempt to log onto other websites, which can be very damaging to businesses and consumers, Cybernews said.

The recent wave of hacks targeting several sites including Ticketmaster were the result of credential stuffing attacks, said Cybernews.

Three years ago, a leak of 8.4 billion passwords called RockYou2021 was posted on a hacker site. At the time it was the largest password leak.

Cybernews said its analysis determined that the 10 billion leaked passwords in the RockYou2024 document included 1.5 billion new passwords leaked from 2021 through 2024.