54 billion cookies leaked. With their help, someone can hack into your account!
A huge number of cookies have been leaked online and can be used by cybercriminals. The files come from, among others: from Google search and YouTube.
Hackers have stolen 54 billion cookies, which can now be used to commit countless crimes. NASK experts warn that the so-called Cookies can be used, for example, to steal IP addresses and passwords.
The big cookie theft
More than 2.5 billion of all cookies in the data set stolen by hackers came from Google, and another 692 million from YouTube. Over 500 million of them came from Microsoft and the Bing search engine.
Of the stolen cookies, as many as 17 percent (9 billion) were active, and they may be particularly dangerous if used by cybercriminals.
However, experts point out that although active cookies carry a greater risk, inactive ones also pose a threat because they create the opportunity for hackers to use the stored information for various abuses and manipulations.
What are cookies?
Cookies, also called “cookies”, are small pieces of text that a website sends to your browser and which the browser sends back the next time you visit the website. This saves you from having to enter the same login details every time you return to this page or navigate from one page to another.
Experts from the Scientific Academic Computer Network (NASK) inform that cookie leaks are most often the result of malware running on the device. The hacker then has access to our resources without knowing the password and without having to provide a second authentication factor. According to experts, effective protection against such a threat is to install software only from trusted sources, use antivirus programs and take care of broadly understood cyber hygiene.
