Cybersecurity researchers uncovered what is being called the "mother of all breaches," a colossal dataset containing 16 billion login credentials, including user passwords for Google, Facebook, and Apple. To put that figure in context, the cache represents twice the current human population of the Earth.
This event was not the result of a single breach, but likely a compilation of data stolen from multiple breaches over many years.
Cybernews analysts believe a patchwork of infostealer malware strains (think RedLine, Raccoon, and Lumma) quietly siphoned logins from compromised endpoints. Once collected, the data was merged into 30 separate datasets and posted online, where it was scraped before the original links vanished.
Because passwords in these dumps are typically sold for a few dollars, or even traded for reputation in hacker communities, the material spreads rapidly and is hard to eradicate. The only certainty is that every exposed credential will be tested against corporate VPNs, SaaS portals, and email services in search of a foothold.
Emails (96.10%) and passwords (88.16%) appeared in nearly all breaches and leakages observed by Constella in 2023, and according to the IBM cost of a data breach report, compromised credentials were the most common initial attack vector of data breaches in 2024.
Combine these findings with a rising trend of Shadow IT practices and this latest monumental breach, and a disturbing reality begins to settle in: the odds that your organisation’s usernames and/or passwords are circulating amongst cybercriminals are uncomfortably high.
The importance of tracking identity breaches
An identity breach — where employee credentials are stolen and exposed in cybercriminal networks — is one of an organization's most direct and dangerous threats. In the hands of cybercriminals, compromised corporate credentials open the door to a host of cyber attacks, including ransomware deployment, privilege escalation, and sensitive data theft.
Relying on employees to report when they’ve reused a compromised password is not a viable security strategy. Organizations need a proactive, automated way to discover when and where their corporate credentials have been exposed on the deep, dark, and surface web. This is where continuous identity breach monitoring becomes an essential layer of modern cybersecurity defense.
By actively scanning the open, deep, and dark web for corporate credentials, security teams can proactively identify compromised corporate accounts and take immediate action — such as forcing a password reset — instead of only becoming aware of the exposure after an attacker attempts to use a stolen login.
The key to effective identity breach protection at scale is a combination of continuous automation and rich contextualization, so security teams can quickly focus on true positives and actionable risk, not noise.
UpGuard’s Identity Breaches module continuously monitors the open, deep, and dark web, including forums, marketplaces, and data leak sites, for your company's exposed credentials, providing rich context for discovered incidents so that compromised accounts can be rapidly secured before they have a chance to be exploited.
The human factor you can’t ignore
While monitoring for external credential leaks is critical, human behaviors inside the organisation often determine whether attackers can exploit exposed accounts. Weak password practices, reuse of personal passwords on corporate apps, and risky sharing habits continue to drive many account compromises.
Comprehensive human cyber risk management goes beyond identity breach mitigation. It also includes daily monitoring of shadow IT and file-sharing habits. These signals are then converted into dynamic user-risk scores, helping security teams understand which remediation tasks to prioritize, such as password resets or targeted security coaching.
A smarter approach to account compromise
The "mother of all breaches" is a startling wake-up call of both the vulnerability of corporate credentials and the unsettling likelihood that cybercriminals are currently trading the keys to your network.
While continuous monitoring for corporate leaks is now a critical security function, it only addresses the symptom. A truly resilient credential protection strategy must also tackle the cause of these events by managing the internal human behaviors leading to account compromises. This proactive, two-pronged approach is the most viable path to not just knowing when your organization has been impacted by a breach but having the processes in place to respond before attackers do.
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