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Cybercrime is vast and complex, and recent events underscore its scale. The FBI recently sent 630 million passwords to Troy Hunt, the creator of the Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) service. For four years, the FBI has shared data from investigations to help organizations prevent the misuse of compromised passwords. HIBP now handles an impressive volume of searches, averaging nearly 7,000 requests per second, with spikes much higher. Every request is an opportunity to thwart account takeovers.
The new batch of passwords came from devices seized during an FBI investigation. This data, sourced from both the open web and dark web platforms, introduced about 46 million passwords to the HIBP database that hadn’t been seen before. Although this represents only 7.4% of the total, it significantly expands the pool of passwords that users can check against to secure their accounts. The service's effectiveness is enhanced by its open-source model. Many organizations download the complete password list for offline queries, which leads to countless additional checks beyond the initial API requests.
Cloudflare supports HIBP's infrastructure, ensuring that users can quickly access this data from anywhere in the world. Those hitting the API have immediate access to the searchable database, while offline users can now download the latest data. This initiative aims to make it more difficult for cybercriminals to exploit leaked passwords.
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