Apparently we live in the age of hacks and leaks – first the famous hack of some celebrities’ iCloud accounts, exposing their bare skin on the internet, followed by the Snapchat scandal that is still ongoing. The next one in the row is the news about information of hundreds of Dropbox accounts finding their way on the internet, with millions to follow. Was Dropbox hacked, you might ask? Well, in a post published on the Dropbox blog the service has reassured its users that it was not.
Recent news articles claiming that Dropbox was hacked aren’t true. Your stuff is safe. The usernames and passwords referenced in these articles were stolen from unrelated services, not Dropbox. Attackers then used these stolen credentials to try to log in to sites across the internet, including Dropbox. We have measures in place to detect suspicious login activity and we automatically reset passwords when it happens.
Attacks like these are one of the reasons why we strongly encourage users not to reuse passwords across services. For an added layer of security, we always recommend enabling 2 step verification on your account.
The news about the possible hack of the popular cloud storage service were triggered by a discovery made by The Next Web – the magazine has located a Reddit comment thread that linked to a website with hundreds of usernames and passwords (allegedly associated with Dropbox accounts) were listed in plain text. Those responsible for the hack have asked for Bitcoin donations so they could continue their activity, and publish all the over 7 million compromised passwords. As the counter on the bottom of the thread shows, they never got any.
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According to the statement made by Dropbox to The Next Web magazine, the service itself was not hacked – instead, just like in the case of Snapchat, it was a third party service that was attacked and overtaken by the hackers. Still, to be sure, the service recommends enable two step verification – you can find the instructions on the Dropbox website.