GOOGLE PASSWORDS FOUND IN DATA BREACH PASSWORD

There is a collection of 2.2 billion passwords, some dating as far back as 2008, being passed around on criminal forums. And just because the breach was a long time ago doesn’t mean the criminals won’t try.

GOOGLE PASSWORDS FOUND IN DATA BREACH PASSWORD

The number of password breaches also makes it difficult for individual users to stay on top of every incident and make sure they are changing the passwords right away. The more places a password is used, the more likely these attackers will succeed in their attempts. Reusing passwords means having to change the password for every site that used the now-breached password.Īttackers take credentials stolen in data breaches and try to use them on popular online services, such as email, social media, retail, and financial services accounts to see if they can get access. All they have to do is change that one password. In the event of a data breach where passwords are stolen, users who already use unique passwords for each web application or service have less to worry about compared to those who reuse passwords. 'If we detect that a username and password on a site you use is one of over 4 billion credentials that we know have been compromised, the extension will trigger an automatic warning and suggest that you change your password,' wrote Google research scientist Kurt Thomas and product manager Adam Dawes in the announcement.

If the password has been compromised, the user will be alerted and prompted to create a new password.

When the user attempts to log in to a website or application via the Chrome browser, the extension checks the password against an internal Google database containing billions of already-compromised login credentials. Google introduced a new Chrome extension which will automatically and securely check whether user passwords have been exposed in a data breach.Ĭalled Password Checkup, the Chrome extension is Google's attempt to address the problem of password reuse on the Web.

Google passwords found in data breach