There’s no need to panic about the nearly five million compromised Gmail passwords that appeared in a Russian Bitcoin security forum this week, according to Google. Fewer than 2% of the compromised username and password combinations work, Google’s spam and abuse team said in a blog post late yesterday.
Almost five million password combinations were published, however a Google spokesman said there was “no evidence” that its systems had been hacked. Instead, experts believe the passwords are either old ones obtained through phishing attacks on users, or passwords used on other sites in conjunction with Gmail addresses.
The New York Times struck fear into Internet users everywhere yesterday with its report that Russian hackers had gotten hold of a staggering 1.2 billion username and password combinations. But is the threat exaggerated? At Forbes , Kashmir Hill finds it a little fishy that Hold Security, the Wisconsin security…
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