Hackers have stolen 8.3 million user data records from royalty-free stock photo website 123RF. The cyber criminals breached a server belonging to 123RF’s parent company, Inmagine Group, to access the data.
According to a report from Bleeping Computer, a known data breach broker began selling the data containing user information last weekend. The data reportedly includes 123RF members' full names, email addresses, MD5 hashed passwords, company names, phone numbers, addresses, PayPal emails and IP addresses. However, it’s not thought to contain financial information, such as credit card numbers.
Inmagine Group said: "We are actively notifying the necessary authorities and 123RF.com members to work with them to remedy the situation. We are also tightening the security policies to include tighter passwords and IP detection to combat suspicious log-ins."
"Our security infrastructure is always under a constant state of security testing, penetration, and development, especially in the past year. We wish to reiterate that we take the privacy and data of our customers seriously and have at all times been vigilant with the handling of our customer’s data."
Chris Hauk, consumer privacy champion at Pixel Privacy, told IT Pro that the state of online security makes New York City in the early 1970s look safe by comparison. He added that while passwords were encrypted, hackers could use online password cracking tools to retrieve credentials for many accounts.
“This means that 123RF members that reused that same password on another site(s) are in danger of having those accounts accessed. So, this brings an added bit of urgency to the usual ‘change your password and check to make sure none of your online accounts use the same password’ advice,” Hauk said.
Niamh Muldoon, senior director of trust and security at OneLogin, told IT Pro that it’s unclear how this breach occurred in the first place; however, what is known is the information is out there, and cybercriminals are likely already taking advantage of it.
“The MD5 hashed passwords are easily hacked, for instance, so they will likely carry out credential stuffing attacks to access other user accounts. Affected individuals would do well to change all passwords immediately, particularly if the same password was used for their PayPal account. A password manager would be useful as well to ensure that passwords are no longer reused across services and to help with crafting long and complex passwords,” Muldoon said.
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