THE video website Dailymotion has been hit by a massive hack attack which has leaked the passwords and private information of up to 85 million people.
Experts from the security firm LeakedSource claimed 85.2 million usernames and email addresses were stolen on October 20 as well as 18 million passwords.
Luckily, these passwords were scrambled so hackers will find it very difficult to use them to access accounts.
Javvad Malik, a security advocate at AlienVault told WIRED: “While it is too early to establish the why or how, of what happened, the attack against Dailymotion serves as a reminder that a company doesn’t need to hold financial information or any other form of overtly valuable data to be a target.
“Attackers will go after a company, particularly ones with large user bases for a variety of reasons.”
In a statement on its website, Dailymotion urged users to take immediate action.
It wrote: “It has come to our attention that a potential security risk, coming from outside Dailymotion may have comprised the passwords for a certain number of accounts.
“The hack appears to be limited, and no personal data has been comprised. Your account security is extremely important to us, and to be on the safe side, we are strongly advising all of our partners and users to reset their passwords.”
Mark James, a security specialist at ESET, echoed this advice.
He told the BBC: “Check and change your passwords on this site, if you have used that same password on any other site then change those immediately and possibly consider a password manager if you’re not already using one.
“Without further information about what was or was not stolen, we won’t know the extent of the damage – but needless to say more data being added to your already overflowing online profile floating around the web is not good for any of us.”
