The Immortal Breach: Why Old Passwords Leaks Will Always Haunt You

By Rakesh Raghuvanshi, Founder and CEO of Sekel Tech

It is often said that the internet never forgets. And while this line is mostly used in the context of someone’s old tweets resurfacing, there is a far more sinister meaning that we don’t talk about enough.

Recently, reports of a “Gmail password breach” flooded social media, sparking panic and confusion. Headlines screamed that millions of Gmail accounts had been compromised. But soon, Google issued a clarification saying that its systems were not hacked. The leaked passwords, the tech giant added, came from older data dumps, that is, massive archives of stolen credentials compiled from years of unrelated breaches, phishing kits, and malware infections.

In other words, this was not a new breach at all. It was a compilation of many older ones stitched together.

As usual, some believe that there was a breach and others ...