Some Databases of Flipboard Hacked and Account Information of the Users got exposed

Flipboard, the famous news aggregator platform, has revealed that their databases having account information of some users was hacked. Data that was possibly downloaded a number of times when the hackers have access to a few of their databases included the user credentials, the company disclosed in the email that was sent to all the Flipboard users. The company is based in Palo Alto of California.

A notice about the security incident was also published on the website of Flipboard revealing details about this data breach. Still, the total affected number of users is uncertain. But passwords were reset by the company for all its users (i.e. around 150 million) as precautionary measure, including passwords that were protected cryptographically. However, Flipboard confirms that "not all Flipboard users' account information was involved in the incident".

As per the email sent to their users, Flipboard disclosed that it discovered that hackers have gained access to a few of their databases containing user information of Flipboard between 2nd June, 2018, and 23rd March, 2019, as well as also on 21st April and 22nd April, 2019. The company stated in the email that "the databases involved may have contained your name, Flipboard username, cryptographically protected password, and email address".

The security incident which specifically happened between 21st April and 22nd April, 2019, has been discovered on 23rd April, 2019, when the engineers of Flipboard were investigating about suspicious activity that happened on 23rd March, 2019. The company stated in their website notice that "our engineering team became aware of the incident after identifying suspicious activity in the environment where the databases reside".

Flipboard also added that most of the passwords that were possibly downloaded by hackers during security failure have been hashed using bcrypt.

"To help prevent something like this from happening in the future, we implemented enhanced security measures and continue to look for additional ways to strengthen the security of our systems," stated the company without revealing any exact details because of security reasons.

In addition, Flipboard mentioned that they informed the law enforcement about unauthorised access and has involved an outside security firm for investigating the flaw.

» SPAMfighter News - 6/18/2019