Kickstarter - Hacked Last Week

Couchpotato

Couchpotato

Part-Time News-bot
Supporter
Joined
October 1, 2010
Messages
36,318
Location
Spudlandia
Kickstarter was hacked last Wednesday, and they have an official statement on the site. I'll leave this up for a few days so people can change their passwords.

On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers' data. Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.

No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on all but two Kickstarter user accounts.

While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.

As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you create a new password for your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password.

To change your password, log in to your Kickstarter account and look for the banner at the top of the page to create a new, secure password. We recommend you do the same on other sites where you use this password. For additional help with password security, we recommend tools like 1Password and LastPass.

We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.

Kickstarter is a vibrant community like no other, and we can’t thank you enough for being a part of it. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. You can reach us at accountsecurity@kickstarter.com.

Thank you,

Yancey Strickler
Kickstarter CEO
Click to expand...
More information.
 
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,318
Location
Spudlandia
I know this is a few days late but we had a forum topic started in the forums. Thanks to a few members writing I should post it on the front page here it is.^^
 
Last edited:
Joined
Oct 1, 2010
Messages
36,318
Location
Spudlandia
Don't forget for those who used kickstarter, to not just change your password there, but change it everywhere else you used that same password.

Better yet, use a different password per-site. Use a tool like KeePass to generate a unique password per site (and use a really strong, 5+ word password to access your KeePass file).

Sites will keep getting hacked - the hackers are getting much more aggressive and skilled and keeping per-site passwords will minimize the damage that is done (to you) when a site you use gets compromised.
 
Joined
Oct 4, 2011
Messages
236
Location
New Paltz, NY
Well, I even use separate email account for almost every site. Thanks to owning a domain I can make infinite email accounts.

It's a fact of life, but it's still a hassle.
 
Joined
Oct 22, 2006
Messages
409
Care to elaborate on the poor security? Did they store in clear text or something ( thought they address that point)? Its not like this site has financial information in it but it does have personal contact information as do most websites as well as donation information.

Anyway I use PassSafe to generate passwords for each site separately and changed it anyway.
 
Joined
Apr 23, 2010
Messages
688
Unsugared, too ?
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2006
Messages
21,947
Location
Old Europe
Joined
Oct 13, 2007
Messages
7,313
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom