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The incident was reported by Cybernews, which wrote that a number of data had now been leaked that could fall into unauthorized hands as a result of previous hacker attacks. The leak affected numerous well-known websites such as LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), Chinese social networking sites Weibo and Tencent, and various other platforms were also hacked.
It is known that
A total of 26 billion records (or entries) were released from the hacked databases into the world, something that had never been seen before.
The portal calls the case “the mother of all leaks”. According to Cybernews, the data was organized into more than 3,800 folders across the Internet, and each folder corresponds to a previous, smaller data breach. The total size of the leaked data is 12 terabytes (1 terabyte is equal to 1024 gigabytes).
It may affect at least 12 Hungarian databases
The 26 billion data leak was analyzed by cybersecurity researcher Bob Dyachenko together with the Cybernews team.
The site also noted that while some of the 26 billion records may have been published on the Internet before, there is almost certainly information among them that has now been published for the first time. As written, they have a database containing data from previous, larger leaks, and it only contained 15 billion records (combined from over 2,500 different leaks). Of course, there may be overlaps between the 26 billion records (for example, it is conceivable that similar data from the same person was leaked from two websites).
On behalf of the portal, they also published the complete list with a search engine of which sites were affected by the latest Giga leak. We found this in the search engine
A total of 11 Hungarian websites with the .hu ending were affected by the leak.
These are very different sites compared to each other: These include, for example, the websites of large companies, but also dating sites. These are the following pages:
- antikregiseg.hu;
- app-arak.hu;
- arkoz.hu;
- euronote.hu;
- Invitationl.hu (this former Internet service provider, by the way, is now part of Digi);
- Lokalhoszt.hu;
- maxer.hu;
- randizzon.hu;
- rshun.hu;
- soproni.hu;
- usapolo.hu.
At the same time, Hungarian users, by definition, do not only use websites with the .hu ending, so the number of those affected by the data leak may be higher. Cybernews promised that in the future it would try to develop a tool that can be used to find out whether a person’s data has been leaked from a database.
Meanwhile, one of Hungary’s leading motorway vignette providers, VoxPay, also issued a statement on Thursday about the data leak (although its name is not included in the database). They write:
Unfortunately, our company’s name was probably misused as part of this cyber attack. Below we would like to draw your attention to some important information to ensure security and a transparent purchasing process.
“We recently discovered that some fraudsters are also sending offers of dubious origin to purchase motorway vignettes in the name of VoxPay. These scammers usually promise the opportunity to purchase stickers at a discount, but we must emphasize that VoxPay does not send such offers via email, SMS or any other channel.”
They added: “The price of e-stickers is always an official fixed price, and a convenience fee may apply for online purchases.” Please note that under no circumstances can we offer a discount on the price of the motorway vignette. It is currently possible to win valuable prizes as part of our winter raffle campaign, you can read more details about this here. In addition, VoxPay never asks its customers for their contact information and personal details. Please do not fall for such scams and always check the official source of your purchase,” they stressed.
Finally, they added: “Against this background, we have worked intensively in recent days to further strengthen our login conditions and to offer our customers the highest level of security in the purchasing process.” Please monitor your accounts closely and notify us immediately at the email address ugyfelszolgalat@voxpay.hu if you notice any suspicious activity.
Incidentally, most of the data sets (1.4 billion) were leaked by the Chinese company Tencent. In second place is the Chinese Weibo (504 million), in third place is MySpace (360 million), followed by X/Twitter (281 million), the music app Deezer (258 million) and LinkedIn (251 million). The websites of many state governments affected by the leak can also be found there, for example American, German, Brazilian or Turkish websites.
There are also several other names on the list of Cybernews, whose services were used by many Hungarians. Examples of this include the software company Adobe (153 million records), Canva, known for its image editing program (143 million records) or the smartphone dating app Badoo (127 million).
Therefore, it can pose a danger to users
It is not yet known who or who could be behind the incident. Currently, experts only assume that the leaker may have had an interest in storing and sharing the data and that a data broker or other malicious actor who handles large amounts of data could be behind it.
The researchers also added that the case poses a risk because this data can be used for various online frauds (e.g. to provide a false identity or for so-called “phishing” and similar abuses). On the other hand, there is also a risk that in some places even users’ passwords are leaked and if a person uses the same password on multiple websites, hackers can hack their account due to the leak.
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