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Wednesday, May 21, 2014

ebay hacked and asks users to change passwords

Posted by Jim Bernstein

Online shopping, buying and selling giant ebay has become the latest victim in the ongoing saga of cyber attackers. ebay is where millions of people buy and sell new and used products from coins to cars. They have reported that 145 million registered users may have been compromised since a database containing encrypted passwords and other information has been hacked.

The semi-good news is that it’s just passwords, email addresses, phone numbers and birth dates that have been compromised and not financial information and PayPal account details. Other good news is that the passwords were encrypted so the hackers will need to be able to decrypt them before being able to use them which can take some time or may not even be possible depending on their skills.

ebay says the breach occurred from late February to early March and was only discovered about two weeks ago. The breach came from within the company’s corporate network and carried out via employee computer systems by hacking login credentials.

So if you are an eBay user you should change your password and also your PayPal password if it’s the same just to be safe.