In gee-that’s-terrifying news, as much as one fifth of the German population is at risk after a massive email hack that targeted .de addresses.
Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security announced that passwords and “other details” of 16 million email users had been breached by hackers. With a population of around 80 million, that means that 20% of Germany’s population could be affected by the hack – and that would be assuming everyone in the country had a .de email address. The percentage of German email users affected is likely even greater.
From The BBC:
The Federal Office for Security said criminals had infected computers with software which allowed them to gather email addresses and account passwords…The agency learnt that the online criminals had managed to infect millions of computers with a program that would enroll them on to a network from where data could be stolen.
There’s no word of any lead on the hackers responsible for the breach, but the office has set up a dedicated site for people to go to find out if their email address may have been compromised.
Back here in the states, the data breach dominating the news cycle is that of major retailer Target. The company recently announced that upwards of 70 million accounts were compromised in a data breach that occurred around Black Friday. Representatives from the company are set to testify before Congress in an attempt to get to the bottom of a slew of recent high-profile data breaches. They’ll likely find that things are only going to get worse. It’s a new world, folks.
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