What to do if your **Gmail account** is among those that have allegedly been compromised? What happened?
In these hours, news is circulating that a group of Russian hackers is in possession of a very large archive ofaccounts and their passwords.
More specifically, it seems that the group of cybercriminals has as many as 5 million login credentials for theGmail service, the email service provided by Google.
The news made its way around the world in a few minutes, also because the list was made available on the Bitcoin Security board, so many were able to check if their email address and password were included.
A very serious matter, if it were indeed due to security flaws in the giant of Mountain View’s system.
However, some doubts arise spontaneously, since among the published and therefore apparently stolen email addresses, there is a significant number of addresses that clearly appear to bealiases.
These are, in a sense, fictitious addresses, usable for registrations on forums or services for which one does not expect real interaction via email.
Analias addressis created, in fact, by placing the symbol “+” preceded by another word next to the real header of one’s email address. For example, an alias could be indicated as follows: “firstname.lastname+alias@gmail.com”.
Therefore, the doubt is that – rather than an infiltration into Gmail’s security systems – the incident is instead the result of a sweeping scan of forums, blogs, and various services for which one has registered using a Gmail address.
At Google’s headquarters, an investigation is underway to find an explanation and a solution for what may have happened or, in any case, to prevent such incidents in the future.
What can be done toverify if your Gmail account was also targeted by this Russian operation?
You can check via this link: https://forum.btcsec.com/uploads/manual_09_2014/google_5000000.7z.
In general, to protect yourself from similar situations, it is always advisable and appropriate to proceed withsetting up two-factor authentication, which is possible for Google services.
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