Imgur is one of the most popular image portals in the world. The company, which was created in 2009, collects millions of stories represented in images every day. However, as is often the case more than usual, this company suffered a massive hack years ago "2014 to be exact." And it was not until a few days ago that they realized the computer attack.
The story goes back to November 23. The company receives an email at its headquarters and it is read by the COO (Chief Operating Officer). It is when the person in charge realizes the attack suffered years ago and affecting millions of user accounts.
On the afternoon of November 23, Troy Hunt, responsible for the page «Have i been pwned»And an expert in this type of matter, alerts the company by email. The reaction was swift, as the This notice is detected by the COO of Imgur and in turn he notifies the Founder and CEO of the company.
They quickly get in touch with the investigator to get more information and to find out the extent of the hack. It is on the morning of November 24 when they come to the conclusion that 1,7 million user accounts have been affected. In other words, 1,7 million usernames and passwords are compromised.
Quickly proceed to I reset all these accounts and contact the users affected that they change their password in order to access the Imgur service. Likewise, the company states in its own corporate blog that users should not be afraid of anything, since the only data they can collect are emails and name, it is the only thing that is requested in the registry.
Although the investigation is still open, from Imgur itself they bet that the intrusion into their database could be due to the SHA-256 encryption, one of the most committed in recent times. Although last year 2016 it was updated to a more powerful encryption algorithm.