Adobe shuts down Connect user forum, confirms passwords raided
Connect itself untouched - unless you used the same login
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Adobe has admitted that its Connectusers.com forum database was compromised, exposing password information about users of its conferencing technology in the process.
Potentially exposed passwords were hashed using MD5, but it's not clear whether or not they were salted, an extra security precaution that thwarts brute force attacks based on compiling rainbow tables of password hashes from dictionaries of plain text passwords.
Adobe suspended the forum on Tuesday night in response to the breach, reportedly pulled off using a SQL injection attack. It is working to restore services, resetting the passwords of users in the service in the process. In a statement, the software developer stressed that the Adobe Connect web conferencing service itself was not affected by the breach.
Adobe is currently investigating reports of a compromise of a Connectusers.com forum database. These reports first started circulating late during the day on Tuesday, November 13, 2012. At this point of our investigation, it appears that the Connectusers.com forum site was compromised by an unauthorized third party. It does not appear that any other Adobe services, including the Adobe Connect conferencing service itself, were impacted.
An advisory from the software giant goes on remind everyone to use different login credentials across different websites and services. This is common-sense password security advice that limits users' exposure to harm in the event that any of the services they use suffers a breach that exposes their private information, sadly an increasingly frequent occurrence. Adobe apologised to forum members for the breach.
Adobe Connect offers online conferencing and collaboration software used for applications including online training and web conferencing. It's unclear how many users of the software have created profiles in the affected Connectusers.com forum. It's also unclear who might have pulled off the attack or why.
The exposure of user information following database breaches is becoming an increasing frequent occurrence. Notable examples have resulted in the potential leak of more than 6 million LinkedIn password hashes back in June.
Last year hack attacks on sites including Gawker and the network of Sony's gaming division have led to the leak of hundreds of thousands of users' credentials online.®
COMMENTS
No salt
These passwords are easily deciphered as Adobe did NOT use any salting at all, only MD5 hashing.
You can verify this yourself with the dumped password hashes on any MD5 decrypting service online such as http://www.md5decrypter.co.uk.
Here are some example passwords from this Adobe dump:
dd1d0b2af2fa511bbf2d779170e48e87 -> hawaii12
404cd280d0ad67426bf5905b014bf78a -> landoc
eb412907dbcfed8a86419f8f5e786ca0 -> freed0m
25ee0c0c5392c0faf8d475917da10ba4 -> murphy
50be2cd4cd1fa5ecece20d0c73476029 -> austin15
9bef6a2f98f4033eea83fbd76902fa63 -> boinks
One wonders what they future of Adobe is? they need to get real. Their software is massively overpriced, bloaty and it seems they can't even administer a forum correctly either, what's the "premium" price for?
It's a shame they bought Macromedia.
Re: What about this stupid policy?
In the nature of a full database breech, what would matter then is how many people use the same username across websites. It's not uncommon for people to use the same handle across many websites, in which the outcome is the same. Also, when the full database is taken, they'll get the email account associated with the user anyway.
That also doesn't stop the more in depth hacker from searching any hacked forums by user to see if they leak other usernames and handles to search.
It still boils down to not sharing passwords across sites, and if possible, using a different email on each site.
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