7 Million Dropbox Accounts Compromised, Data Being Posted Online
Although the company denies a hack, over 7 million Dropbox accounts have reportedly been compromised with the details being released online.
Cloud technology is a wondrous, fantastical thing. Used on our phones to automatically sync photos, videos and the like to all of our devices and often used so that entire teams can collaborate no matter their location, the cloud’s benefits are far and wide. Yet, like people being told that the Earth was round or those witnessing the marvels of electricity for the first time, there are more than a handful who have run screaming in fear. The recent iCloud hack (hundreds of celebrity nudes were leaked) cast doubt over cloud security and now with Dropbox, one of the biggest cloud services, also reportedly compromised, those fears may have just been validated.
The suggestion of a Dropbox hack comes after someone took to pastebin and posted a document containing 400 Dropbox usernames and passwords. While that’s a small number, the poster claims that this is just the tiniest portion of approximately 7 million account details. The same person has even been asking for Bitcoin donations in order for them to release more info and troublingly, they seem to have gotten them.
Yet, despite all this worrying talk of hacked accounts, Dropbox fervently denies that they have been hacked. In a statement a Dropbox spokesperson explained,
“These usernames and passwords were unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts. We’d previously detected these attacks and the vast majority of the passwords posted have been expired for some time now. All other remaining passwords have been expired as well.”
While they say that these passwords are expired, this will hardly be a salve to those concerned that the hacks took place in the first place. But, the company also reminds people that Dropbox two-step login verification is available so just to be on the safe side it’s highly recommended that you head over to the site and enable that now.
Source: The Next Web
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