Dropbox pushed mandatory password changes for large swath of user base following hack of 68 million accounts

Well, there’s a pretty good reason Dropbox asked a large segment of its user base to change their passwords last week.

The password change, which focused on users who had signed up period to mid-2012, followed the discovery of a large dump of email addresses and passwords related to these accounts.

The online storage company confirmed late Tuesday reports that 68 million user email addresses and hashed and salted passwords from an incident in 2012 had been compromised.

The company said that the mandatory password reset covered all affected users, thereby leaving the accounts protected.

Hackers stole over 60 million account details from the online storage platform in the previously disclosed breach.

The company did not comment on how the account information had been breached.

In July 2012, Dropbox said its investigation found that usernames and passwords recently stolen from other websites were used to sign in to a small number of Dropbox accounts. It said it had contacted the users affected to help them protect their accounts. A stolen password was also used to access an employee Dropbox account containing a project document with user email addresses, leading to spam attacks, the company said at the time.

So, even the big boys get hacked from time to time.

Stay safe out there and we’ll have additional details as they become available.

Via Macworld and Motherboard