The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling! Dropbox Got Hacked!
“Have you heard?
Dropbox was hacked!”
“Oh no! When did that happen?”
“In 2012.”
“Now you’re telling me?”
If No News Is Good News Does That Make Old News Bad News?
Well, it’s a little bit of both. The good news is that it is old news. Dropbox has fixed their security issues. Everything should be fine now.
According to Information Age, “The company was alerted to the breach when users noticed they were receiving spam on email accounts they only used for Dropbox. Their investigation found that usernames and passwords recently stolen from other websites were used to sign in to a small number of Dropbox accounts.” (Emphasis ours.) That item was posted on 01 August 2012. Seems innocuous enough. Things happen.
Now for the bad news. Fortune magazine published a report on 31 August 2016 first released by Motherboard on 30 August 2016. Thanks to these updates, we now know what “a small number” means. To the surprise of many, it is close to 70 million. That’s small compared to the national debt, but it’s kind of a big deal for any of the 68,680,741 accounts whose email addresses and password details were stolen.
Don’t Run. Reset.
There is no need to panic (unless you are one of the 68,680,741). What’s done is done. It’s water under the bridge. There is nothing anyone can do to undo what has been done. Dropbox initiated a password reset during the last two weeks of August. According to a Dropbox spokesperson, “We’ve confirmed that the proactive password reset we completed last week covered all potentially impacted users.” That makes you wonder how similar “all potentially impacted” and “a small number” are.
Dropbox recommends that users also reset their passwords as a precautionary measure. Tech Talk has published seven easy steps to enable a two-step verification for Dropbox account access. Those steps are listed below.
- Sign in to dropbox.com.
- Click on your name from the upper-right of any page to open your account menu.
- Click Settings from the account menu and select the Security tab.
- Under Two-step verification section, click Enable.
- Click Get started.
- For security reasons, you’ll be asked to re-enter your password to enable two-step verification. Once you do, you’ll be given the choice to receive your security code by text message or to use a mobile app.
- After enabling the feature, consider adding a backup phone number that can receive text messages as well. If you ever lose your primary phone, you’ll be able to receive a security code to your backup phone number instead.
That does it. Be good to go. The sky is not falling. We will let you know if it is.