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RockYou App Site Hacked, 32M Accounts Compromised

by Terrence O'Brien on December 15, 2009 at 05:35 PM

RockYou, maker of irritating apps for Facebook and other social networks, along with add-ons like 'Glittertext' for MySpace, has suffered a major security breach that has potentially exposed e-mails and passwords of some 32 million users. Security firm Imperva contacted RockYou to alert it to a flaw it had found in its database of account information. But Imperva's warning was too late. At least one hacker has already claimed to have gained access and posted portions of the stolen data to prove it.

According to the hacker's posting, he obtained the account info for exactly 32,603,388 of RockYou's roughly 55 million users. What's worse though, is that the information for accounts on the site was stored in an unencrypted text file -- including e-mail addresses and passwords. If you have a RockYou account and tend to use the same password for everything, we strongly suggest you change the password on all of your accounts. Now.

RockYou shut the site down temporarily while it patched the security flaw, but there is more to worry about. The company told TechCrunch that it was alerted to the hole by Imperva on Dec 4, almost two weeks ago, and it was "planning" on alerting users through a mass e-mail. Why do we have a feeling they would have been perfectly happy to let this one slip under the radar? [From: VentureBeat, TechCrunch, igigi's blog]

Tags: malware, rockyou, scammers, security, top

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