Google add-on Password Check checks if your account has been hacked

Google wants to make the internet a little safer. Since the security of a system stands or falls with the user, Google focuses on that user with its new features. With a new extension for Google Chrome, the internet giant checks whether an account has been hacked, or whether the login details have been leaked.

The new feature is called Password Checkup and can be downloaded as of today. The add-on sees it when a user logs on to a website and then checks whether the data the user enters can be found in a database with accounts that are certain to have been cracked by hackers.

Billions of hacked accounts

Google has a database with more than four billion account details that provides it with an update every time a new database with login details appears on the internet. These kinds of data leaks have taken place on a regular basis in recent years. This is partly due to the large-scale hack attacks, which sometimes cause millions of login data to leak at the same time.

If Password Checkup discovers an account whose login details have actually appeared on the Internet, it will notify the user accordingly. He or she is then asked to change his or her password. In order to make all this possible, Google must collect the login data and it does so as carefully as possible.

Strong security

Password Checkup uses specialized security mechanisms created by Google in collaboration with Stanford University. The extension first makes login data anonymous and encrypts them before they go to Google’s servers. On these servers, Google then compares the situation, looking for hacked accounts. This too takes place in a way that, according to Google, the content of the database is not vulnerable to abuse.

The technology used by Password Checkup should be widely applicable to Google. For this reason, the company would soon publish a paper explaining exactly how things work. Subsequently, other companies may also use the technique.