'Russia's Facebook' was hacked and 100 million users' details are up for sale
The hack of the site, which is sometimes referred to as "Russia's Facebook," was first reported by hack-tracking site LeakedSource.
The data taken includes email addresses, names, phone numbers, locations, and unencrypted passwords. It is now being sold online for one bitcoin - around $584, or £404. The sale is new, although the hack apparently happened some time ago - in 2012 or 2013, the hacker selling the data told ZDNet.
Business Insider has not verified the data, but ZDNet's Brian Whittaker got his hands on it and says that "many of [the accounts] turned up valid results" when he searched for them on the site - indicating the hack is legitimate. (Motherboard has done likewise.)
Even though it happened several years ago, a hack like this can still have adverse consequences right across the internet. Because lots of people reuse their passwords, hackers can try and use the VKontakte logins to access victims' other accounts. For example, Mark Zuckerberg's Twitter and Pinterest accounts were just hacked - probably because he reused the same password he had used for LinkedIn, which also suffered a mega-hack of 160 million user accounts.
So if you have an account on VKontakte, hurry up and change your password - especially if you're using the same one elsewhere online.
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