![\"Cupid](\"http:\/\/farm3.staticflickr.com\/2807\/10960129914_ca043b0d85.jpg\")
\nImage Source: Cupid Media Hack Exposed 42M Passwords<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
Almost 2 million of the users had the password ‘123456<\/em>‘ followed by 1.2 million with ‘111111<\/em>‘ (I’m guessing they had a 6 char minimum password requirement).<\/p>\n A hack on niche online dating service Cupid Media earlier this year has exposed names, e-mail addresses and\u2014most notably\u2014plain-text passwords for 42 million accounts, according to a published report.<\/p>\n The cache of personal information was found on the same servers that housed tens of millions of records stolen in separate hacks on sites including Adobe<\/a>, PR Newswire, and the National White Collar Crime Center, KrebsonSecurity journalist Brian Krebs reported Tuesday night. An official with Southport, Australia-based Cupid Media told Krebs that user credentials appeared to be connected to “suspicious activity” that was detected in January. Officials believed they had notified all affected users, but they are in the process of double-checking that all affected accounts have had their passwords reset in light of Krebs’s discovery.<\/p>\n The compromise of 42 million passwords makes the episode one of the bigger passcode breaches on record. Adding to the magnitude is the revelation the data was in plaintext, instead of a cryptographically hashed format that requires an investment of time, skill, and computing power to crack.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Standing at 42 million passwords, it is indeed one of the biggest breaches ever – and whoever got hold of this had to put no time, effort or computing power into brute forcing hashes<\/a>. They just opened the DB dump and had 42 million e-mail addresses and passwords.<\/p>\n With many people re-using their passwords across multiple sites, this is indeed like striking the lottery for hackers.<\/p>\n