24 Billion Stolen Credentials Were Just Found in a Single Database. Here's What to Do in the Next 60 Minutes.
Breaking Research Credential Crisis June 2026 · 7 min read On June 12, 2026, security researchers discovered a publicly accessible database containing 24 billion records — usernames, email addresses, plaintext passwords, and the login URLs they unlock. The database is now offline. The credentials are not. Here's what this means for your business and the five actions to take right now. The first thing the researchers did when they saw the number was check it again. Then they checked it a third time. Twenty-four billion records. More than 8.3 terabytes of data, stored in a publicly accessible Elasticsearch cluster discovered on June 12, 2026. The database contained usernames, email addresses, plaintext passwords, and the specific login URLs that those credentials could be used to access. The database was taken offline by June 15 — three days after discovery. But the credentials did not disappear when the database w...