'Mother of all breaches' affecting 26 billion records of popular apps

YOUR personal data could be at risk after cyber security experts discovered what could be the biggest breach of all time.

The massive data breach involves 26 billion records.

Bob Dyachenko, the owner of SecurityDiscovery.com, and Cybernews are credited with the shocking discovery.

Cyber ​​news has described it as a “super-heavy breach” and the “Mother of All Breaches” or MOAB for short.

This includes data from popular apps including Twitter, Weibo, MySpace, LinkedIn, Adobe, MyFitnessPal, JD.com and more.

The researchers believe this is the largest data breach ever discovered.

They found the stolen data on an unsecured website.

It is thought the culprit behind the breach may never be discovered, but could trigger a tidal wave of cybercrime.

The researchers said: “The dataset is extremely dangerous because threat actors can use the collected data for a wide range of attacks, including identity theft, advanced phishing schemes, targeted cyber attacks, and unauthorized access to personal and sensitive accounts.”

Cybernews suggests that the person storing this data is a “malicious actor, data broker, or a service that works with large amounts of data.”

Although 26 billion stolen data records have been found, it is possible that some are duplicates.

The data has not been described in detail, but is said to be sensitive and valuable to cybercriminals.

According to the researchers, Chinese instant messaging app Tencent QQ was the hardest hit, with a total of 1.4 billion records stolen.

The leak also allegedly involved data from several government organizations in the US, Brazil, Germany, the Philippines and Turkey, as well as other countries.

According to the experts, the impact of this could be unprecedented.

The researchers say: “If users use the same passwords for their Netflix account as they do for their Gmail account, attackers can use this to access other, more sensitive accounts.

“Aside from that, users whose data is included in the super-heavy MOAB may fall victim to spearphishing attacks or receive a large number of spam emails.”

If you're concerned about your data, it's best to change your passwords for important accounts.

Be vigilant when looking for suspicious activity on your social media or banking apps and be on the lookout for phishing emails.