Expert: Half of hacked Gmail data base is fake

The information about 5 million stolen Gmail addresses appeared right after the hacking scandal at Yandex and Mail.ru. The news about stolen Gmail passwords is already being discussed on the Internet. The emphasis has changed – everyone can be hacked.

"A link to the stolen data base of about 5 million Gmail accounts appeared on a forum. The information was published at habrahabr and started being distributed from there. However, according to my investigation, the data base was not hacked and only half of the accounts are real. The passwords were stolen from users, not from Google. They were retrieved with the help fop trojans. Then the data base was expanded to look solid,” security expert Alyaksei Charnyayeu told Euroradio.  

Specialists from different states have found out that most of the stolen passwords are old and were accumulated over a long period of time.

"About half of the passwords may be real. But 80% of them are older than 12 months. The rest are fake.”

The date base was complemented with addresses from spam lists with fake passwords, the expert thinks.

That is why it does not seem that a lot of passwords were stolen from Google and one should not start panicking. However, it is necessary to change passwords often enough, the expert advised. You can also use the SMS authorization service. If you notice that someone else has been browsing your mailbox, change your password as soon as possible.

Meanwhile, a lot of users have started checking whether their accounts are in the stolen data base. However, specialists advise against it as such website may be created to collect active addresses.