Reply To: Is It Safe to Store My Passwords in a Windows Browser ? Interesting thought I had regarding Passwords and Windows Edge, Google Chrome and other browsers and how safe are your passwords stored / secured in these browsers ? Lots of different…

[UK Sentinel]

This Password Has Appeared in a Data Leak: What does this mean ?

“This password has appeared in a data leak, putting this account at high risk of compromise. You should change your password immediately”

What Is a Data Leak? – A data leak is a security incident in which private information becomes available to unauthorized persons. People may steal, accidentally transfer, or willingly give it away. Leaked data can be in digital (electronic files) or physical (documents, letters, pictures, devices) form. However, data leaks are not the same thing as data breaches.

What is a Data Breach? – A data breach is a security violation, in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Other terms are unintentional information disclosure, data leak, information leakage and data spill.

Simply put, a data leak is when sensitive data is unknowingly exposed to the public, and a data breach is an event caused by a cyberattack

Types of data leaks:

• Intentional data leak
• Accidental data leak
• Outsider working to damage the company

Types of Large Scale data breaches:

• XSS attack. A cross-site scripting (XSS) attack is a remote code execution (RCE) flaw that may be caused by web applications that employ standard vulnerabilities such as XSS vulnerabilities.
• SQL Injection attack.
• MITM attack.
• Ransomware attacks.

So even though you protect your own passwords, update operating system and AV regular, passwords are mainly leaked by systems which are outside of your control. (my opinion).

Hence the primary need to ensure and practice using unique passwords and change them regularly – this way a breached data system with one account will not impact an account you have on another system as you are using different passwords.

And welcome to Passwords Managers.

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).

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