They were only fined €20,000. The regulator gave them a massive discount because the platform reacted instantly, notified its users, and completely overhauled its security architecture immediately after the breach. 🛡️ Why This File is Still Dangerous Today
The incident is famous in cybersecurity circles for a couple of major reasons:
The most alarming part of this leak was that millions of passwords were saved in "plaintext"—meaning they were completely unencrypted and readable to anyone who opened the file. 📜 A Brief History of the Breach
Since people are notorious for reusing the exact same passwords across different platforms, hackers use automated bots to test the email-and-password combinations from this old file on modern banking, social media, and retail websites. 💡 What You Should Do
Even though this breach happened years ago, files like "knuddels.de.txt" continue to pop up. Cybercriminals frequently recycle old database dumps for .
The file typically contains a massive list of leaked user credentials from a cyberattack that took place in 2018. The leaked database includes: and real names. Email addresses (over 800,000 unique emails). Home cities of the users. Plaintext passwords .
