The Lifecycle of a Stolen Password
In 2025, researchers discovered a single dataset containing over 16 billion login credentials leaked from across the web. Most people believe hackers "guess" their passwords, but the reality is much more automated.
Hackers target a service's database. Even if it's a minor site you haven't used in years, your email and password can be harvested in bulk.
Passwords are usually "hashed" (encrypted). Hackers use massive GPU clusters to crack these back into plaintext in seconds.
Bots automatically "stuff" your credentials into high-value sites like Amazon or Gmail to see where else you reused that password.
Statistics show that over 80% of users reuse the same password across multiple platforms. This turns a single minor breach into a total digital identity compromise.