Collection #1 Data Dump the “Tip of the Iceberg”

A recently discovered trove of breached data is just a small part of a major 871GB haul up for sale on the dark web which could contain billions of records, according to experts. The 87GB Collection #1 dump was first publicized late last week when noted researcher Troy Hunt was alerted to the files hosted on a popular cloud site. After cleaning up the data he found it contained nearly 773 million unique email addresses and over 21 million “dehashed” passwords. It has since emerged that this data is two to three years old, gathered from multiple sources, and that the same seller, dubbed ‘Sanixer’ on Telegram, has much more recently obtained data to sell. Authentication security vendor, Authlogics, claims to have the data from Collection #2, 3, 4, and 5 in its possession and is loading it into its breached password database. It estimates the new trove of data comes to roughly 784GB, nine-times the size of Collection #1, and could contain over seven billion records in its raw state.