4.930.000's roughly accounts gmail (usernames and passwords) we published earlier were published in one Russian forum which deals with Bitcoins. The leak started on Tuesday, as first reported by the Russian website CNews. This is the bad news. The good news is that this leak does not appear to be a massive leak after further checks.
TNW contacted Google about the issue. The company does not believe that the leak is the result of any kind of security breach on its servers.
"The security of our users' information is a top priority for us," a Google spokesman told TNW.
Then, after the topic was posted all over the internet, the forum administrators deleted the password files, leaving only the links to a txt file containing the information. Tvskit, the forum user who posted the file, claimed that about 60% of the passwords were valid.
A quick analysis of the text file shows that it includes mainly English, Spanish and Russian accounts and seems to combine data from large lists that have been published from time to time. This could be a link to hacks made on sites that are not related to Gmail or any of Google services, especially if users choose the same usernames and passwords for their other accounts.
The result, however, is that this leakage affects many but not 5 million users, as many have changed their passwords.
If you want to check if your account is included in the leak, you can see our previous post.