Dropbox is the latest tech company to be hacked and according to Motherboard, over 68 million email addresses and passwords have been dumped on the internet.
According to the Motherboard, “files containing email addresses and hashed passwords for the Dropbox users through sources in the database trading community. In all, the four files total in at around 5GB, and contain details on 68,680,741 accounts. The data is legitimate, according to a senior Dropbox employee.
Earlier this week, Dropbox announced it was forcing password resets for a number of users after discovering a set of account details linked to a 2012 breach. The company did not publish an exact figure on the number of resets, and said it had taken the move proactively.”
“Our security teams are always watching out for new threats to our users. As part of these ongoing efforts, we learned about an old set of Dropbox user credentials (email addresses plus hashed and salted passwords) that we believe were obtained in 2012. Our analysis suggests that the credentials relate to an incident we disclosed around that time,” the company wrote.
The initial problem according to Dropbox may have come from a stolen password that was used to access the account Of a Dropbox employee on LinkedIn. You do remember the LinkedIn 2012 breach which affected about 117 million accounts the effects of which may have spread to other platforms. This is possible because it’s common to see people use one password across multiple sites these days. They did ask people to change their passwords in an email to LinkedIn users.
Dropbox has asked people to change their passwords as well and you should do this without delay in order to safeguard your data.
Paul Balo is the founder of TechBooky and a highly skilled wireless communications professional with a strong background in cloud computing, offering extensive experience in designing, implementing, and managing wireless communication systems.
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