What Happened
In 2024, cybersecurity researchers including Bob Dyachenko and the Cybernews team discovered an unprotected online database dubbed the “Mother of All Breaches” (MOAB), containing approximately 26 billion records—spanning 12 terabytes across over 3,800 folders—primarily compiled from thousands of prior breaches, reindexed leaks, and privately sold databases, with a high likelihood of including some previously unpublished data. The exposed credentials and sensitive information affected users of major platforms like LinkedIn, Snapchat, Venmo, Adobe, X (Twitter), Tencent QQ (1.4 billion records), Weibo, and Dropbox, enabling risks such as identity theft, phishing, and targeted attacks; the database, initially linked to Leak-Lookup via a firewall misconfiguration (later fixed), was not tied to a single company breach but aggregated historical and potentially new stolen accounts. No specific “MailPass Database 26M” breach matching that name and scale was identified, though “MailPass” may refer to common credential pairs (email:password) within this massive compilation.
