Cybersecurity researchers discovered what they dubbed the “Mother of all Breaches” (MOAB), a supermassive database containing 26 billion records, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Weibo, Tencent, and other platforms’ user data.
The database was discovered by security researcher Bob Dyachenko and the Cybernews team.
The MOAB is said to be a compilation of meticulously indexed data from thousands of previous leaks, breaches, and privately sold databases. While the majority of the exposed records are from past breaches, researchers warn that the MOAB likely contains previously unpublished data.
While the researchers were not able to identify the owner of the MOAB, they believe that the database could be created by a malicious actor, data broker, or a service specializing in large-scale data processing.
While duplicates among the 26 billion records are expected, the leaked data contains not only credentials but also sensitive data that could be of value for malicious actors as it could be used for identity theft and other nefarious purposes.