Security Alert: If you’ve got a Dropbox account go change your password now

How to choose a password image from {author}

Image from thewikiman used under a Attribution License

It’s always a good idea to use good passwords.  But passwords are only as good as the security on the database that stores them.

If you’re a Dropbox user (a service RealBasics uses to share files and folders with our clients, by the way) you’ll want to change your password now.  Here’s the scoop from tech news site Motherboard

In August, Motherboard reported that hackers had stolen over 60 million account details for online storage platform Dropbox. The details were from a previously disclosed breach, but the true scale of the hack had not been previously revealed.

Now, anyone can download the email addresses and hashed passwords for 68,680,741 accounts totally for free. On Monday, Thomas White, also known as The Cthulhu, uploaded the full dump onto his website, a move that he says is to help researchers examine the breach.

Source: Motherboard

Note: I don’t know any of our clients use Yahoo but 300 million Yahoo users should to change their passwords too.

My advice, as always, is to use a good, long, memorable, but semi-random pass phrase rather than a shorter string of hard-to-remember numbers, capital letters, and punctuation marks.  But really at this point any new password is better than even the best old one.

 

FacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmailFacebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail
Posted in , tagged with: #, #

David Innes, RealBasics.com

I've been building and maintaining websites since 1997 and building and supporting similar hypertext-driven software since 1987. I've done maintenance, support, and maintenance for physical and digital systems since 1981. And no, I still haven't seen it all but by now I usually know where to look. More about David Innes...