18 Million E-mail Account Passwords Stolen in Germany

German newspaper The Local quotes German authorities saying that they are investigating a major mass theft of 18 million email passwords that had affected all the ISPs in Germany.

 Prosecutors tell that they are determining how these passwords were stolen. The prosecutor told media that compromised email accounts are being used online for making online purchases.

 Also the other online accounts, whose users had put same passwords as that of their email’s, have been hacked. 

According to Der Spiegel, at least 3 million of the stolen accounts belonged to German citizens. 

This is the second major breach of e-mail account information in Germany this year — in January, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security announced that 16 million stolen e-mail addresses and passwords had been found during an analysis of botnets.