The FBI has been at the heels of a Russian hacker connected to the theft of the largest number of passwords and usernames to date. The hacker, known as ‘mr. grey’, has been reported to have been involved in a heist of personalised log-in credentials.
‘mr. grey’ Stole Over 1.2 Billion Usernames and Passwords
The hacker, which is allegedly a part of an entire Russian crime ring, also stole over 500 million email addresses last year. The FBI has declared that it’s getting closer to ‘mr. grey’ thanks to the discovery of an email sending spam.
Following this lead, the FBI has been granted a warrant to follow-up, and as of the court files released last week, there hasn’t been any further information on how the chase has progressed.
A Chase Four Years in the Making
The email, which was initially sent in 2011, offered services to anyone looking for account information of Facebook, Twitter or Russian VKontakte, the Russian Facebook counterpart, claiming he could track it down. The results of this chase have not yet been released, but the FBI insists that this ‘mr. grey’ character could be a key figure in tracking down the team of Russians behind the credential heist last year.
