Researcher finds database of about 149 million stolen credentials as Binance denies being breach source

Cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler found a publicly accessible large database on Jan. 26 containing about 149 million username and password records from private phones and computers, according to a blog post he published on ExpressVPN and as reported by BlockBeats. The exposed credentials span Facebook, Instagram, Netflix and Binance, with at least 420,000 linked to Binance users, and also include 48 million Gmail accounts, 4 million Yahoo accounts, 17 million Facebook accounts, 6.5 million Instagram accounts, 3.4 million Netflix accounts and 780,000 TikTok accounts. Fowler said government-related accounts and .gov domain credentials are concerning and could enable phishing via impersonation of government agencies. A Binance spokesperson stated that "information stealers" are a known malware variant that exfiltrate credentials from compromised devices and that the data is not from a Binance breach.