Digital Terrorism - 'A gang of Russian hackers has amassed over 1 billion username and password combinations and more than 500 million email addresses, a security firm reported late Tuesday, calling it the largest-ever haul of stolen Internet credentials. The massive trove - stolen from hundreds of thousands of websites - was discovered by the Milwaukee firm Hold Security, according to a post on its website. According to the post, it took more than seven months of research to identify the gang, whom the firm dubbed CyberVor, or cyber-thief in Russian. Intrusions against large retail or other chains designed to steal payment card information or other personal data en masse have multiplied in recent months. Most famously, retail giant Target was hit over the holidays last year, and 40 million payment card numbers were stolen. Many of the hacker gangs behind these attacks are based in Russia and Eastern Europe, which have grown into global centers of cybercrime while Russian officials have largely turned a blind eye. The U.S. has ramped up extraditions and prosecutions of Russian cyber criminals, but that has not stemmed the tide. Last month, the Justice Department brought charges against the son of a Russian parliamentarian arrested in the Maldives, Roman Seleznev, who it accused of being one of the world's most prolific cyber thieves of credit card information." DigitalMarketing.com, & ReputationManagementConsultants.com