Over 1.7 Million Users Affected In Major Imgur Data Breach

Posted on November 25, 2017 at 5:10 PM

Over 1.7 Million Users Affected In Major Imgur Data Breach

The image sharing service confirmed that over 1.7 million accounts were compromised during a major data breach in 2014.

The well-known photo-sharing platform, Imgur, recently confirmed that it was the target of a huge data leak in 2014. According to the company, the breach exposed the login credentials of 1.7 million users.

Despite the breach occurring in 2014, the firm was only made aware of it earlier this week by cybersecurity expert, researcher, and creator of Have I Been Pwned, Troy Hunt. The notification was sent at a somewhat awkward time, as the US was celebrating their Thanksgiving holiday at the time.

However, despite the unfortunate timing, Imgur responded in record time, according to Hunt. Within a day, the company alerted its users and published an official statement regarding the matter.

The firm’s chief operating officer, Rog Sehgal, has confirmed that the only user information that was exposed, were users’ account login email addresses and passwords. Sehgal continued to state that Imgur never asks a user for other sensitive information.

According to Imgur, they have launched an investigation as to how the data breach was orchestrated.

The photo-sharing service confirmed that previously they did employ encryption to secure users’ passwords, however, it is possible that this encryption could have been compromised by using the SHA-256 hashing algorithm. Since the event, however, Imgur has updated their algorithm to use bcrypt instead. The bcrypt algorithm has been active since 2016.

In their statement, Imgur emphasized that their users’ privacy protection remains of the importance to them. In addition, the company confirmed that they intend to launch an internal security audit which will focus on their security systems. The firm concluded by once again apologizing to their users for the inconvenient data breach.

Since Hunt’s notification, the company has worked quickly to address the data breach, and for this Hunt took to Twitter to praise Imgur:

Hunt also stated that of all the compromised emails, over 60% of the leaked emails were already in his website’s database.

Several companies have recently revealed data breaches that occurred some years ago and have only learnt of the breach recently. Some prominent companies affected include: MySpace, Yahoo, Disqus, LinkedIn, and We Heart It.

Summary
Over 1.7 Million Users Affected In Major Imgur Data Breach
Article Name
Over 1.7 Million Users Affected In Major Imgur Data Breach
Description
The well-known photo-sharing platform, Imgur, recently confirmed that it was the target of a huge data leak in 2014. According to the company, the breach exposed the login credentials of 1.7 million users.
Author
Publisher Name
Koddos
Publisher Logo

Share this:

Related Stories:

Newsletter

Get the latest stories straight
into your inbox!

YOUTUBE

Discover more from KoDDoS Blog

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading