Over 400,000 user account details have been leaked onto the internet in Sweden after 60 websites have been attacked.
The hacks first became known to have happened on Tuesday when Swedish politician William Petzll’s Twitter account was used to publish passwords to email accounts belonging to some well-known journalists. Petzll has claimed that his Twitter account was hijacked and that he had no involvement in the posts. As a result of this, his Twitter account has been closed.
It has been revealed that the passwords had been taken from the blogging site Bloggtoppen.se which has been vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. Its user database was compromised and published in September on a website called Flashback. Following this, the data was then distributed on Twitter.
The blogging site has now been closed and founder Jimmy Holmlund told Computer Sweden that he was completely unaware of any attacks until the data was published on Twitter.
Computer Sweden has stated that on Wednesday, account details from another 57 websites were published, compromising user account details of over 400,000 people.
This is one of the largest hacks to ever take place in Sweden due to the amount of user account information that has been compromised.
A previous hack that compromised user account details in Sweden occurred in January 2008. 235,000 accounts details were compromised. Computer Sweden believe that the repercussions of this latest hack will be far greater due to more and more people using the same password for several different accounts and therefore making it far easier for intruders to access email accounts and accessing sensitive data.
