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[–] 46 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If your credentials are in an infostealer dump then you need to make sure that you've removed the malware from your device(s) before changing your passwords. Otherwise your new passwords will be sent straight to the same people who got them the first time.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    In your opinion, what's the best way to find and remove malware for the average user?

    I currently use Malwarebytes and windows defender. I'm wondering if this is enough or should I change something?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago

    I wouldn't rely on software running on the (potentially infected) system, since all malware these days will attempt to turn off or evade antivirus tools.

    If you believe your device is compromised then you should wipe it and reinstall the OS. You should also delete any executable files on external media (secondary drives etc.) that may have been infected (eg. any setup.exe programs or portable exes), or at the very least verify the cryptographic hashes of those files if possible.

    If you want to know if your credentials appear in a breach then search on Have I Been Pwned?. If it says your password appeared in an "infostealer dump" then you know that it was stolen directly from your device and you need to wipe it. If it was just the website that was breached then it wasn't you personally that was hacked and you should just change your password.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Windows Defender is absolutely useless and Malwarebytes is only slightly better. I’d recommend Bitdefender, and make sure it’s installed on a freshly erased computer. Digital security is an arms race and the bad guys are winning.

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago

    I need more information. How is the malware being distributed to these devices? How can we check if our credentials are in this dump? Shouldn't the respective platforms be doing due diligence to notify those effected and asking them to change their passwords?

    I feel it may be fairly likely that this inforstealer Malware is the type distributed by dubious apps the play store and similar have had to take down but aren't actively notifying users who installed them. Is it predominantly phones that are effected or is this malware PC based? Changing your passwords is important but sounding the alarm with no actual information is just... Ill advised. It's fear mongering.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago

    Reads more like an advertorial. Low on detail, high on "passkeys are the future", and plenty of typos.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago

    Is this real? The article gives no concrete details.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    What's the total human population again, 8 billion?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I don't know about you, but I have 2 Apple accounts, 2 Facebook accounts, and like 9 Google accounts. I know I'm above average, but it's not hard to have 1 of each for normal uses.

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (12 children)

    “This is not just a leak – it’s a blueprint for mass exploitation,” the researchers said.

    Are the researchers chatgpt? Because that looks almost word for word how chatgpt would write something like that, right down to the em-dash.

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    If it is, their stupid model forgot a "more" in this passage:

    Password compromise is no joke; it leads to account compromise and that leads to, well, the compromise of most everything you hold dear in this technological-centric world we live in. It’s why Google is telling billions of users to replace their passwords with much secure passkeys.

    (Wow, much secure. Very password.)

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  • [–] 31 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Man, I love my em-dashes, but now im a bot for using it 😭

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, same. Long-time user of an em-dash—love a cheeky en-dash in my ranges too. But now LLMs are using them all the time, out of context, and with spaces on either side.

    Is nothing safe?! Next it'll be semicolons!

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Yeah, what’s with the spaces? I’ve been an emdash slut for 20 years, but I’ve never put spaces on either side. I’ve also scarcely seen anyone else do that, until LLMs became popular.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    It’s probably your fault, you loved em dashes too much that AI started using them after stealing all your content

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I was going to say "I don't use em-dashes in my books for when they sole all those books" but then I went into my first book and found 22 em-dashes so... oops. I thought the word processor changed -- into an en-dash and not an em-dash.

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  • Need a breakdown first before everyone starts freaking out. This sounds like a UUID leak.

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  • 13 comments in c/technology@piefed.social view that post
    [–] 10 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    change your account passwords, use a password manager and switch to passkeys wherever possible.

    Can someone explain to me how passkeys are more secure / better than passwords?

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

    Passkeys are a cryptographic public key authentication system, similar to how SSH keys work.

    Your password manager stores your passkeys. You must complete a private/public key pair challenge with the website you are trying to authenticate with in order to login using your passkey.

    It changes the factor from "something you know" to "something you have".

    Most password managers require biometrics (something you are), or require a master password (something you know). Once this is paired up with a passkey (something you have), it means you are using multi-factor authentication to login, which is much stronger than using just username and password.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Wait does 2FA count as a passkey?

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    No, two factor authentication does not mean it is a passkey.

    Email is something you know, but also something you have. You know the username and password to your inbox, but you have access to your inbox if you stay logged in, so this can be either factor. A phone number is something you have, so you can receive text messages with it as a factor. Passkeys are its own technology that fit into the something you have category. Once you have two of these factors combined, thats how you get the 2FA experience.

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  • A super basic explanation as I understand it.

    With a passkey the server (like Google) only has half of the passkey, you have the other half.

    So having the server half be made public is still safe, as it's not useful on its own without the other half that you still have kept private.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    It's a little unclear to me how recent this was. If I changed my passwords like a few weeks ago am I fine? They mention the investigation has been since the start of the year so I assume the password leak was from before that?

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Are there any genuine articles on this? I assume forbes is just clickbait

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I haven't seen anything on this one specifically, but if it's anything like the previous releases of this size, it's just a compilation of a bunch of older releases, not billions of new passwords.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    That's the thing, the article says it's all new:

    The 16 billion strong leak, housed in a number ion supermassive datasets, includes billions of login credentials from social media, VPNs, developer portals and user accounts for all the major vendors. Remarkably, I am told that none of these datasets have been reported as leaked previously, this is all new data. Well, almost none: the 184 million password database I mentioned at the start of the article is the only exception.

    but the autistics on Mastodon aren't going wild about this so I feel safe assuming it's Forbes clickbait

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Anti big tech chads are vindicated again.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago
    [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Get yourself a Yubikey or two, keep all your 2FA codes on a physical keychain rather than some Authenticator app.

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