Backbytes: One billion passwords cracked! Pay $120 to find out if you're affected...

Is there really a Russian gang that has seemingly cracked 1.2 billion user names and passwords? Really???

When news went round that a "Russian gang" had cracked some 1.2 billion user names and passwords - for what, it wasn't entirely clearly - our eyebrows were raised so high even Roger Moore would have been impressed.

It wasn't just the lack of specifics: What, exactly, did these user names and passwords open up? Were they encrypted or unencrypted? What losses could reasonably be attributed to such a treasure trove of authentication data?

But also the uses to which they had allegedly been put. According to the New York Time s article, the company responsible could only say that some of them had been used to compromise Twitter accounts in order to send spam - the horrors!

What launched our eyebrows into orbit was the offer by the company, some outfit called "Hold Security", to tell you whether any of your accounts had been compromised - for a low monthly fee starting at just $120. Yes, per month.

The service even "comes with a 2-week money back guarantee, unless we provide any data right away", according to the company's website. Under questioning of some more clued-up IT hacks, the company quickly back-tracked? $120 per month? Sorry, terrible mistake, they meant per year.

Err. Thanks. Panic over.