2016 mega breaches continue as hackers steal and leak 33 million QIP.ru accounts
2016 appears to be the year of the "mega breaches" and the hits keep on coming, with the Russian instant messaging service QIP.ru becoming the latest victim of hackers.
Cybersecurity startup Heroic, which offers hacker and cyberattack protection to users, told IBTimes UK that the firm had "obtained and validated a data breach of over 33 million accounts associated with the Russian instant messaging platform".
The database, which according to the firm contains 33,394,101 accounts, has been verified with successful password reset attempts. "The database was provided to us by a renowned hacker daykalif@xmpp.jp," the firm said. "The database contains user email addresses, usernames, passwords and other related fields dating from 2009-2011. The passwords within the database were stored in plaintext with no encryption or hashing."
