The German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has revealed that nearly 16 million email addresses and passwords have been compromised after falling into the hands of botnet operators.
A BSI spokesperson revealed that about half of the addresses are from the German .de domain, and there are also French and .com addresses on the list.
However, it remained unclear that these login credentials provided access to which accounts, which is speculated to be mail accounts, Facebook accounts, Amazon accounts or other online services, PCWorld reports.
According to the report, it is being said that this was likely a case of large scale identity theft, but BSI did not reveal any further details.
The list was found by law enforcement agencies, while analyzing several botnets, and was released to only BSI.
BSI said that the users were invited to check their email address against the list by sending their address to the BSI using a website, and in return they receive an email with a code from the BSI.