It is not quite uncommon that we see news about data breach, password hack and privacy invasion cases on a regular basis. It is also a fact that not all of these data theft incidents are as disastrous as others are. But recently, the digital world has been witnessing cyber crimes that have left a trail of wreckage in their path. As if the internet world had not yet recovered from the recent photo leak incident that engulfed more than 100 Hollywood celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, there came another shocking blow that sent shock waves of high magnitude among the cloud storage users.
Hackers have leaked online hundreds of Dropbox passwords and usernames after claiming that they have stolen more than 7 million highly confidential login credentials. The first leak appeared on Monday 13th October when an anonymous hacker posted more than 400 pairs of usernames and password on Pastebin.com. It has also been said that apparently these hacks were initiated via third-party services (apps) and hackers used these services to strip the log in information.
In an effort to make this hack public links to the Pastebin posts, where the account details were published, were shared on Reddit. In addition to this, The Next Web was the first to notice this malicious data leak and also reported that hackers threatened to release 6.9 million more email addresses and passwords belonging to Dropbox users. It is also an interesting reality that accounts with email addresses that were starting from letter ‘b’ were targeted, and that the user is taking Bitcoin currency donations.
Although Dropbox was quick enough to deny any such breach incident and its marketing manager mentioned that the breach has not affected any of its consumer data, this announcement has left a big question mark on the overall credibility and reliability of cloud storage as a whole. It is a blatant fact that online storage is nowadays the most trusted and prevalent form of storage and backup tool and it has made our lives convenient by providing ease of accessibility, freedom and secure data backup solutions. But despite of these merits, ordinary internet users seem to be reluctant in trusting cloud storage now for the storage of their sacred most photos, videos, reports and files.
However, despite of these reservations, it is undeniable that the advantages of online storage outnumber its demerits by a far margin. There are certain precautionary measures which should be deployed in order to save you from this prevalent malice. Firstly, always set a unique and strong password to your folders. Consider changing your password once a month (at least) so that there are least chances of any hacking attempt. And