MyHeritage Alerts Users to Data Breach

A researcher found email addresses and hashed passwords of nearly 92.3 million users stored on a server outside MyHeritage.

Dark Reading Staff, Dark Reading

June 5, 2018

1 Min Read
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MyHeritage, a platform designed to investigate family history, learned of a data breach on June 4, 2018. It reports the incident affected email addresses and hashed passwords of nearly 92.3 million users who signed up for the site before and including Oct. 26, 2017, the date of the incident.

A security researcher discovered a file named "myheritage" containing email addresses and passwords on a private server outside the site. Further analysis found the file was legitimate, with the data originating from Myheritage. No other data was detected on the server, and there was no evidence of account compromise. MyHeritage handles billing through third parties and stores sensitive data such as DNA and family trees on segregated servers with added security.

The site notes it doesn't store user passwords but instead uses a one-way hash of each password, meaning the hash key is different for each user. Anyone who stole or accessed the hashed passwords did not have the actual passwords.

Read more details here.

 

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Dark Reading Staff

Dark Reading

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