(AP Photo)
"Maybe there was a credit card receipt delivered to your email. They can piece it together [and] that’s where they can make the money for their operations."
According to internet security firm Trustwave, roughly two million credentials to log into some of the world's most popular websites and email services have been stolen in a sophisticated scheme.
According to the company, the keystone appears to be a server that was infecting other computers, turning them into "zombies" to collect more log-in information and relay the information back to the Pony botnet, which has been tied to malicious cyberactivity in the past.
Users in 92 countries and 93,000 different websites are believed to be affected.
"As one might expect, most of the compromised web log-ins belong to popular websites and services such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.," Trustwave said on its website.
The company says hackers stole at least:
- 318,000 Facebook accounts
- 70,000 Gmail accounts
- Almost 60,000 Yahoo accounts
- 21,000 Twitter passwords
- 8,500 LinkedIn accounts
- 41,000 FTP account credentials