Notes

Hackers Steal Millions Of Minecraft Passwords

Hackers steal millions of Minecraft passwords



29 April 2016



Hackers have stolen login data for more than seven million users of the Minecraft site Lifeboat.



Lifeboat members are able to run servers to build custom maps of multiplayer for Minecraft's smartphone edition.



Evidence suggests that stolen information including email addresses and passwords, is being provided by websites which sell hacked files.



The analysis shows that passwords were not adequately secured to allow attackers to easily find them.



Minimise damage



Troy Hunt, an independent security expert, was able to obtain details regarding the breach. He claimed he obtained the list from someone who deals in stolen credentials. He was told by several people that the information was being circulated through dark web sites.



Hunt claimed that the data was stolen in 2016 but that the breach is only recently being discovered.



He stated that passwords for Lifeboat accounts had been hacked however the algorithm employed offered very little security.



Hashing is a technique used to make passwords more difficult to read. aren't easily read if the data goes astray.



He said that often it is the case that an Google search for a hashed password would instantly give the correct plain text value. Minecraft server list The most well-known cracking tools can automate and speed up this process, he said.



"A large proportion of those passwords will be reverted to plain text in a very short period of time," he said in a blogpost about the breach.



He said that this can result in additional security issues as many people use the same passwords for multiple sites, so attackers could find out which passwords are being used to compromise accounts on other websites.



Motherboard was provided with a statement from Lifeboat stating that it had taken the necessary steps to minimize the damage.



"When this happened in January, we decided that the best option for our user was to quietly force a reset password without letting hackers know they could only take action for a short period of time," it said to the news site, adding that it has now adopted more robust hashing algorithms.



It read: "We have not received any reports of anyone being hurt by this."



Mr. Hunt was unhappy with the company for "quietly" forcing the password reset, saying that this policy left him "speechless".



Instead the site, he said, Lifeboat should have done much more to alert users so they could quickly change their passwords if they were using the same one on other websites.



"The first thing that a company should consider following an incident such as this is "How can we minimize the damage to our customers?" he said.



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Website: https://minecraft-server-list.co/