‘Cyber plague’: Experts warn of growing infostealer threat after billions of login details exposed

Published

16 hours ago

June 26, 2025

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“Someone, somewhere is having data exfiltrated from their machines as we speak,” says Volodymyr Diachenko, co-founder of the cybersecurity consultancy SecurityDiscovery.

Sarayut Thaneerat | Moment | Getty Images

Cybercriminals have intensified their efforts to steal and sell online passwords, experts warn. The alarm comes after the discovery of online datasets containing billions of exposed account credentials.

The 30 datasets comprised a whopping 16 billion login credentials across multiple platforms, including Apple, Google and Facebook, and were first reported by Cybernews researchers last week.

The exposures were identified over the course of this year by Volodymyr Diachenko, co-founder of the cybersecurity consultancy Security Discovery, and are suspected to be the work of multiple parties.

“This is a collection of various data sets that appeared on my radar since the beginning of the year, but they all share a common structure of URLs, login details and passwords,” Diachenko told CNBC.

According to Daichenko, all signs point to the leaked login information being the work of “infostealers” — malware that extracts sensitive data from devices, including usernames and passwords, credit card information and online browser data.

While the lists of logins are likely to contain many duplicates as well as outdated and incorrect information, the overwhelming volume of findings puts into perspective how much sensitive data is circulating on the web.

It should also raise alarms on how infostealers have become the “cyber plague” of today, Daichenko said. “Someone, somewhere, is having data exfiltrated from their machines as we speak.”

Daichenko was able to detect the exposed data because their owners had temporarily indexed them on the web without a password lock. Inadvertently shared data leaks are often caught by Security Discovery, but not at scales seen so far this year.

Infostealer threats on the rise

According to Simon Green, president of Asia-Pacific and Japan at Palo Alto Networks, the sheer scale of the 16 billion exposed credentials is alarming and certainly notable, but not entirely surprising for those on the front lines of cybersecurity.

“Many modern infostealers are designed with advanced evasion techniques, allowing them to bypass traditional, signature-based security controls, making them harder to detect and stop,” he added.

Consequently, there’s been an uptick in high-profile infostealer attacks. For example, in March, Microsoft Threat Intelligence disclosed a malicious campaign using infostealers that had affected nearly 1 million devices globally.

Infostealers typically gain access to victims’ devices by tricking them into downloading the malware, which can be hidden in everything from phishing emails to phony websites to search engine ads.

The motive behind infostealer attacks is usually financial, with attackers often looking to directly take over bank accounts, credit cards, and cryptocurrency wallets or commit identity fraud.

Cybercriminals can use stolen credentials and other personal data for purposes such as crafting highly convincing, personalized phishing attacks and blackmailing individuals or organizations.

According to Palo Alto’s Green, the scale and dangers of those types of infostealers have intensified, thanks to the growing prevalence of underground markets that offer “cybercrime-as-a-Service,” in which vendors charge customers for malicious tools, sensitive data and other illicit online services.

“Cyber crime-as-a-Service is the critical enabler here. It has fundamentally democratized cybercrime,” Green said.

Those underground markets — often hosted on the dark web — create demand for cybercriminals to steal personal information and then sell that to scammers.

In that way, data breaches become about more than just the individual accounts — they represent a “vast, interconnected web of compromised identities” that can fuel subsequent attacks, Green said.

According to Diachenko, it’s likely that at least some of the compromised login datasets he identified had or will be traded to online scammers.

On top of that, malware kits and other resources that can help to facilitate infostealer attacks can be found on those markets.

CNBC has reported on how the availability of those tools and services has significantly lowered technical barriers for aspiring criminals, allowing sophisticated attacks to be executed at a massive, global scale.

The report found that infostealer attacks grew by 58% in 2024.

What can be done

With the increasing prevalence of malware and online usage, it’s now fair to assume that most people will, at some point, come in contact with an infostealer threat, said Ismael Valenzuela, vice president of threat research and intelligence at cybersecurity company Arctic Wolf.

In addition to frequent password updates, individuals will need to be more alert about the increasing amount of malware hiding in illegitimate software, applications and other downloadable files, Valenzuela said. He added that the use of multi-factor authentication on accounts has become more important than ever.

From a corporate perspective, it’s important to adopt a “zero trust architecture” that not only constantly authenticates the user, but also authenticates the device and user’s behavior, he added.

Governments have also been doing more to crack down on infostealing activities in recent months.

In May, Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre said it had collaborated with Microsoft and global authorities to disrupt the “Lumma” infostealer, which it called “the world’s most significant infostealer threat.”

Technology

Tesla head of manufacturing Omead Afshar fired by Elon Musk

Published

37 mins ago

June 26, 2025

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Tesla head of manufacturing Omead Afshar fired by Elon Musk

Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., center left, Ying Yong, mayor of Shanghai, center right, and Omead Afshar, left, leave an event at the site of the company’s manufacturing facility in Shanghai, China, on Monday, Jan. 7, 2019.

Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has fired Omead Afshar, the automaker’s vice president of manufacturing and operations, CNBC has confirmed, following declines in car sales in key markets this year.

Afshar, who reported directly to Musk, led a team of more than a half-dozen high level employees, according to internal organizational charts viewed by CNBC.

Forbes first reported that Afshar was dismissed by Musk. Bloomberg reported earlier that Afshar had left the company.

Executives on Afshar’s team included Troy Jones, who is Tesla’s vice president of North American sales, and Joe Ward, vice president of the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Also on his team was Karen Steakley, who now leads business development and policy for Tesla, and previously held the role of deputy director for legislative affairs for Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott.

CNBC reached out to Afshar and to other Tesla executives as well as board members. They didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Afshar was the subject of an internal investigation at Tesla in 2022, Bloomberg reported, which had focused on his orders of hard-to-get construction materials, including a special kind of glass for a secretive project for Musk.

Following that probe, Afshar also worked for SpaceX, Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor, but had returned to Tesla and was promoted to the vice president role.

Afshar’s termination follows the resignation of Milan Kovac, previously head of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robotics program, earlier this month. Kovac said in a post on X that he was leaving in order to spend more time with his family. Musk has thanked Kovac publicly for his work.

Tesla’s stock price is down 19% this year, badly underperforming the Nasdaq and most of its megacap tech peers.

Tesla new car sales in Europe fell for a fifth straight month in May, according to data published on Wednesday from the European Automobile Manufacturers Association, or ACEA, as customers pivot to cheaper Chinese electric vehicles.

The company has faced brand and reputational damage in the past year, largely due to Musk‘s incendiary rhetoric and political activity. Musk spent nearly $300 million to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump to a second term and then led an initiative to slash federal agencies and their resources.

Musk also formally endorsed and promoted Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant AfD party.

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Technology

Circle resumes its post-IPO rally after pullback, stablecoin issuer boosts Coinbase

Published

3 hours ago

June 26, 2025

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Circle resumes its post-IPO rally after pullback, stablecoin issuer boosts Coinbase

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle Internet Group, the issuer of one of the world’s biggest stablecoins, and Circle Internet Group co-founder Sean Neville react as they ring the opening bell, on the day of the company’s IPO, in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.

Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Stablecoin issuer Circle resumed its rally on Thursday after a brief pullback this week.

Shares were last higher by 12%, after losing about 15% earlier over the past three days amid heightened post-IPO volatility and as investors weigh speculation around crypto regulation and the upcoming Fed rate decision.

With Circle still hot off its IPO, its investors may have rotated into Coinbase, which gained 15% in the same two days Circle fell. Coinbase, which began as a crypto exchange operator but has expanded its suite of crypto services, also received a batch of price target increases this week from Wall Street including from Bernstein and Oppenheimer.

Coinbase gained more than 5% Thursday.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

Circle shares over the past five days.

Coinbase is the main distribution platform for USDC, the popular stablecoin issued by Circle. It receives half of the revenue generated from the interest earned on Circle’s USDC reserves. It also makes 100% of the interest on any USDC held directly on its own platform.

As awareness of Circle’s story grows, investors are beginning to see how Coinbase could benefit from opportunities in the stablecoin space.

Shares of Circle have rocketed more than 600% since its initial public offering on June 5. Meanwhile, Coinbase is on pace for a 50% monthly gain, its best month since November and its first three-month rally since the end of 2023. Shares added more than 2% on Thursday.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

Coinbase shares over the past five days.

Investors this week were watching Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, who was on Capitol Hill for his semiannual testimony to Congress. Powell is facing increasing pressure both from President Donald Trump and multiple White House officials to lower interest rates, as well as two key Fed officials who have said they will likely favor a rate cut as soon as July – which could dampen Circle’s earnings. The company earns interest income on the reserves backing USDC, which are primarily held in cash at banks and short-term U.S. Treasury securities.

They’re also watching progress on the GENIUS (short for Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins) Act, which seeks to establish a regulatory framework for the use of stablecoins. The bill passed the Senate last week and now heads to the House of Representatives. The House has its own stablecoin legislation in the works, called the STABLE Act.

Don’t miss these cryptocurrency insights from CNBC Pro:

Technology

AI is doing 30%-50% of the work at Salesforce, CEO Marc Benioff says

Published

5 hours ago

June 26, 2025

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AI is doing 30%-50% of the work at Salesforce, CEO Marc Benioff says

Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of Salesforce, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 22nd, 2025.

Gerry Miller | CNBC

Salesforce is accelerating its use of artificial intelligence in automating workloads, according to CEO Marc Benioff.

“All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher value work,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang, noting that the technology currently accounts for about 30% to 50% of the company’s work.

Technology companies are hunting for new ways to trim costs, boost efficiencies and transform their workforce with the help of AI.

The aftershocks have already hit the tech industry, with the software giant cutting over 1,000 positions earlier this year as it restructured around AI.