As awareness of the cyber threat increases, you may be thinking about what actually happens to stolen customer records and data? A recent report has revealed that there are up to as many as 360 million records available to buy on the black market.
It is unclear as to where they came from or what they can be used to access, though this is a relatively new development in uncovering what actually becomes of the data stolen from businesses by cyber criminals.
This revelation may present further risk to companies and individual consumers as the sets of data could be used to open online bank accounts, networks and health records, as well as any other type of computer system. The risk with online credentials is actually greater than that of stolen credit card details, due to traceability and the potential for accessing multiple online accounts where the username and passwords are used repeatedly.
It is thought that the data is the subject of several online breaches that haven’t been reported, Hold Security LLC, a cyber security agency in the US are working hard to uncover the victims of the cyber attacks. The credentials that have been found are made up of millions of email addresses from providers such as Yahoo, AOL, Google and Microsoft along with passwords that are in an unencrypted format.
