The latest cyber security breach to hit the world is the compromising of around 7 million Dropbox accounts. The accounts were allegedly breached through the hack of third-party applications, which users gave access to.
The leak was first reported by The Next Web, who found the accounts on a website called Pastebin. On the website, the hacker had posted 400 hacked accounts and promised to leak more in return for Bitcoin donations. The cyber thief claims to have over 6.9 million Dropbox usernames and passwords.
After The Next Web contacted Dropbox, they denied that they were the source of the security breach. In a statement, Dropbox said, “Dropbox has not been hacked. These usernames and passwords were unfortunately stolen from other services and used in attempts to log in to Dropbox accounts.”
The company also claimed that most of the passwords in the leaked document had expired. A few months ago, Dropbox had reset the passwords for several accounts after it noticed “suspicious activity”.
Co-incidentally, this is a similar response to the one Snapchat had a few days ago, when 100,000 photos were leaked on the internet, in what netizens call the “Snappening“. Third-party applications are starting to cause problems as they demand access to users accounts and do not have the right security to protect user data.
In the meantime, Dropbox is sending emails to all its users to reset their passwords and sign up for the two-step verification process.
