The Latest in IT Security

(Reuters) – A cybersecurity firm said it has uncovered about 1.2 billion Internet logins and passwords and more than 500 million email addresses amassed by a Russian crime ring, the largest known collection of such stolen data, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Hold Security of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which discovered the credentials, said they were stolen from some 420,000 websites, according to the report. Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike told Reuters that the stolen passwords could be used to access other accounts beyond the ones on sites that were breached because people commonly use the same passwords for multiple sites. Hold Security in February said it had uncovered stolen credentials from some 360 million accounts that were available for sale on cyber black markets.