# I'm confused about the Russian hacking **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 11, 2014, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284 "2014-08-11T03:32:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Lare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lare)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284/1 "2014-08-11T03:32:33Z")
I’m getting lots of notices to change all my passwords. From what I’ve read, cyberbaddies breached security somewhere and have qunitillions of username/password combinations. If I don’t change everything soon, it will be my own darn fault when they break into all my accounts. All right, I get that someone could have my credentials at a site. But from what I’ve read, they haven’t really broken into all-the-sites-there-are so how could they have all the passwords? Further, I haven’t heard about there being a central repository of all usernames that they could have broken into, so, really, how come there’s such a sudden need to change all my passwords? It was one thing when they got into Target. I can understand how that got some user/password combos. But this time they seem to be telling me that everything has been compromised. I try to be a good cybercitizen and don’t use the same password for all my sites, but it seems that this is happening more and more frequently,. I use a password manager, but I’m getting tired of having to reset. Can someone tell me what makes this a valid almost-Armageddon? ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284/2 "2014-08-11T03:35:11Z")
Because most people use the same username and password combo in multiple places. So you can grab the username/password list for [stupidboard.com](http://stupidboard.com) and have a very good chance of having a bunch of logins that also work on [bigbank.com](http://bigbank.com). ---
**Author:** ![Lare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Lare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lare)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284/3 "2014-08-11T03:45:04Z")
I should have thought of that. Naturally I made the mistake of thinking only about my own situation. Thanks. But the stories talk about the tons of credentials lost. Before it would be a certain site (like [Target.com](http://Target.com)). Why is this one on such a bigger scale? ---
**Author:** ![Lare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Lare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lare)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284/4 "2014-08-11T03:54:08Z")
Missed the edit window I just found this, which gives me some data I’d not heard before: > [@](#): > > These hackers reportedly amassed 1.2 billion username and password combinations, and more than 500 million email addresses from 420,000 websites… So, despite my having searched right before my post, the answer was out there and I managed to miss it. (But \*\*ZipperJJ \*\* still has the heart of the matter.) ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284/5 "2014-08-11T12:28:33Z")
After reading in another thread that huge numbers of people never change the default password, or use ‘qwerty’, ‘password’ and the other ‘easy’ combinations, I wonder whether it is actually worthwhile hacking these things. ---
**Author:** ![jtur88](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e9c0ed/32.png) [@jtur88](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jtur88)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2014, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284/6 "2014-08-11T15:17:49Z")
I’ve lived here for 8 years, in a city with a crime rate a bit above the national average, and I never lock my front door – not when I go out, and not overnight. Nobody has turned the knob yet. I enjoy the peace of mind of believing (even if falsely deceptive) that I don’t need to lock up myself nor my belongings. That has, over the years, been a psychic plus. Peace of mind is a wonderful thing to possess, whether illusory or not. Same for my passwords. In the USA alone, there are at least ten billion password-secured accounts. I feel like they won’t have time to do anything with mine when they get to it. On three different occasions, I have received spam sent from old email addresses of people that I had not heard from in years. Somebody broke into them and used them to send spam to everyone in their address book, and were not detected because the original owners had abandoned them. If that’s the worst they can do to me, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it, just as I don’t lose any sleep over my unlocked front door. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2014, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/im-confused-about-the-russian-hacking/695284/7 "2014-08-12T23:41:50Z")
Rumor has it that _Target_ wasn’t compliant. That’s a big deal and, if true, could cause some serious legal issues.