RockYou2021: largest password compilation of all time leaked online with 8.4 billion entries

RockYou2021, the largest password compilation of all time has been leaked on a popular hacker forum, it contains 8.4 billion entries of passwords. 

Original post at: https://cybernews.com/security/rockyou2021-alltime-largest-password-compilation-leaked/

What seems to be the largest password collection of all time has been leaked on a popular hacker forum. A forum user posted a massive 100GB TXT file that contains 8.4 billion entries of passwords, which have presumably been combined from previous data leaks and breaches. 

According to the post author, all passwords included in the leak are 6-20 characters long, with non-ASCII characters and white spaces removed. The same user also claims that the compilation contains 82 billion passwords. However, after running our own tests, the actual number turned out to be nearly ten times lower – at 8,459,060,239 unique entries:

The compilation itself has been dubbed ‘RockYou2021’ by the forum user, presumably in reference to the infamous RockYou data breach that occurred in 2009, when threat actors hacked their way into the social app website’s servers and got their hands on more than 32 million user passwords stored in plain text. 

An example of leaked passwords included in the RockYou2021 compilation:

With a collection that exceeds its 12-year-old namesake by more than 262 times, this leak is comparable to the Compilation of Many Breaches (COMB), the largest data breach compilation ever. Its 3.2 billion leaked passwords, along with passwords from multiple other leaked databases, are included in the RockYou2021 compilation that has been amassed by the person behind this collection over several years.

Considering the fact that only about 4.7 billion people are online, numbers-wise the RockYou2021 compilation potentially includes the passwords of the entire global online population almost two times over. For that reason, users are recommended to immediately check if their passwords were included in the leak. 

To check whether your password is part of this gigantic leak, head over to the CyberNews personal data leak checker or our leaked password checker, where we are currently uploading the password entries from the RockYou2021 compilation. 

If you can’t find your password in our leak databases at the moment, make sure to check back tomorrow, which is when the compilation is expected to be transferred in its entirety.

Potential impact

By combining 8.4 billion unique password variations with other breach compilations that include usernames and email addresses, threat actors can use the RockYou2021 collection to mount password dictionary and password spraying attacks against untold numbers of online accounts. 

Since most people reuse their passwords across multiple apps and websites, the number of accounts affected by credential stuffing and password spraying attacks in the wake of this leak can potentially reach millions, if not billions.

What to do if your password was leaked?

If you suspect that one or more of your passwords may have been included in the RockIt2021 collection, we recommend taking the following steps in order to secure your data and avoid potential harm from threat actors:

• Use our personal data leak checker and leaked password checker to see if your data has been leaked in this or other breaches.
• If your data has been compromised, make sure to change your passwords across your online accounts. You can easily generate complex passwords with our strong password generator or consider using a password manager.
• Enable two-factor authentication (2FA) on all of your online accounts.
• Watch out for incoming spam emails, unsolicited texts, and phishing messages. Don’t click on anything that seems suspicious, including emails and texts from senders you don’t recognize.

Original post at: https://cybernews.com/security/rockyou2021-alltime-largest-password-compilation-leaked/

About the author: Edvardas Mikalauskas

Edvardas is a Senior Writer and Researcher at CyberNews.

Follow me on Twitter: @securityaffairs and Facebook

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, RockYou2021)

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