Hackers Behind Biggest-Ever Password Theft Begin Attacks

An anonymous reader writes Back in August, groups of Russian hackers assembled the biggest list of compromised login credentials ever seen: 1.2 billion accounts. Now, domain registrar Namecheap reports the hackers have begun using the list to try and access accounts. "Overnight, our intrusion detection systems alerted us to a much higher than normal load against our login systems. ... The group behind this is using the stored usernames and passwords to simulate a web browser login through fake browser software. This software simulates the actual login process a user would use if they are using Firefox/Safari/Chrome to access their Namecheap account. The hackers are going through their username/password list and trying each and every one to try and get into Namecheap user accounts." They report that most login attempts are failing, but some are succeeding. Now is a good time to check that none of your important accounts share passwords.

many sites still dumb

[jmccue]

I decided why not change the passwords, been a while anyway, 2 of the 3 sites I care about still do not allow what they call 'special characters' (!@# - etc). In this day an age I would think those restrictions would lifted. One day I will try UTF-8 or UNICODE characters and watch the fireworks at the sites. I do not do on-line banking and I have no incentive to start after seeing some finance sites will only accept US English letters and numbers for PWs.

Re:Notified and ignored?

[Charliemopps]

If so, and they ignored it, oh well, it's your own damn fault.

I hear this argument a lot. But the fact of the matter is, if you're neighbor is stupid enough to let their kids play with matches... yes, that's their fault, but that doesn't mean your house isn't going to burn down right along with theirs. A breach of this scale could have repercussions for the internet as a whole. I run into this attitude at work all the time... lets say we're building a website and we put a button on the screen over to the right, but if they have the window too small they can't see that button. Someone invariably says something to the effect of "Well, you'd have to be an idiot to have your window shrunk down to that size! It's their own fault for being stupid!" at which point I pipe up and say "We want stupid peoples money to don't we?"

You can't just ignore stupid people on the net. That's about 99.99% of people, and they're paying for the rest of us to actually use it properly.