Kickstarter Hacked

Posted by khalling 11 years, 9 months ago to News
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Verifying this is true, an email I received this afternoon. Since it tells me to go directly to the Kickstarter site to change my password, I think it's a good idea for those of you who are members of Kickstarter to read the message below and change your passwords.
On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers' data. Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.
No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on your account.
While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.
As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you change the password of your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password.
To change your password, log in to your account at Kickstarter.com and look for the banner at the top of the page to create a new, secure password. We recommend you do the same on other sites where you use this password. For additional help with password security, we recommend tools like 1Password and LastPass.
We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.
Kickstarter is a vibrant community like no other, and we can’t thank you enough for being a part of it. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. You can reach us at accountsecurity@kickstarter.com.
Thank you,
Yancey Strickler
Kickstarter CEO


All Comments

  • Posted by 11 years, 9 months ago in reply to this comment.
    there was nothing in the email to click. it's out there from several sources and kickstarter directed recipients to go to their website
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 11 years, 9 months ago
    Never click on a link in an e-mail you receive such as this. Always go via your bookmarked link or by typing in the web-site address. Scumbags have gotten very good at spoofing actual web-sites and e-mails and getting people afraid of something (the most recent for me has been notices of legal action at some far off court) which causes the recipient to want to take care of it right away. DON'T DO IT. Take the safe route.
    This would seem to be a valid e-mail, but don't take the chance.
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  • Posted by 11 years, 9 months ago
    gee, I wonder if the govt's requests of companies to have weaker security systems so they could breach them in an "emergency" is what is leading to all this hacking.
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