It seems as if it has become a world wide epidemic. The social media sites, Tumblr and MySpace, have both recently announced that their sites, and customer accounts and passwords, have been successfully attacked by hackers and the damage has been enormous. Combined, the hackers have stolen more than 65 million accounts all containing personal information that is now being offered for sale online.
This severe breach of security comes less than a month after another social media giant, LinkedIn, was hacked and thieves stole more than 167 million accounts, passwords and personal information. Some security experts from around the country don’t seem to believe that these have been just random attacks. As these major social media platforms continue to be severely compromised, many see it as a planned type of action. Security analyst and researcher Troy Hunt also noted that millions of ID’s and personal information from the dating site known as Fling has also appeared for sale online this past month.
“There has been some catalyst that has brought all of these breaches to light,” Hunt recently wrote in his blog. “And, to see them all fit this mold and appear in such a short period of time, I can’t help but wonder if they’re all related.”
The stolen information at these two sites, which, of course, includes emails and passwords into these social media accounts, ranks as potentially the third largest social media breach behind the LinkedIn break and the 150 million that were recently stolen at Adobe.
Though the current 65 million number has been thrown out there and seems to be what has been offered online, the MySpace hack could end up being the largest security breach in history. Potentially, there could be upwards of 360 million accounts and passwords stolen from MySpace despite the company’s use of encryption. The encryption, according to many experts, was extremely weak and could be easily breached by a veteran hacker.
MySpace has issued a statement stating that they have invalidated all passwords back to June of 2011 and that they are doing everything they can to contain the damage and to work with law enforcement in an effort to track down the thieves.