Security experts in Boston revealed today that they discovered a massive network hack which has netted over 2 million passwords in an attack that targeted “weak” passwords from online services around the world, including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, and LinkedIn.

Researchers from Trustwave’s SpiderLabs in Boston say they were investigating a Netherlands-based network when they noticed a group of cybercriminals had used a malicious program called a “Pony botnet” to snatch login credentials from many major websites. The breakdown reads as follows:

Facebook: 318,000
Gmail, Google+ and YouTube: 70,000
Yahoo: 60,000
Twitter: 22,000
ADP: 8,000
LinkedIn: 8,000

The program took advantage of the most commonly used “weak” passwords, including “123456,” “password,” “admin,” “123,” and “1,” amongst others. According to geo-location stats from Trustwave, most of the compromised passwords were in the Netherlands.

Still, this might be a good time to invest in a stronger password.

For more info, visit: Trustwave’s Spiderlabs. 

Jordan Sowunmi is a writer and editor at the Toronto Standard. He is on Twitter: @jordanisjoso

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