KICKSTARTER DATA GETS EXPOSED TO HACKERS AFTER SUCCESSFUL CYBER-ATTACK

Popular Crowdfunding platform Kickstarter security got breached by hackers this Wednesday, at night to be precise. The website revealed in an official blog post published this Saturday that some of its user data have been stolen by the attackers.

In the blog post, the CEO of Kickstarter Yancey Strickler clarified that none of the credit card data was stolen by the hackers but they did manage to access other personal information of its members including usernames, mailing addresses, encrypted passwords, email addresses and phone numbers.

Kickstarter lets people fund projects of diverse kinds such as from technology and gadgets to entertainment and films and offers customer rewards. The site has more than 5 million members.

However, the most critically important detail was missed out from being described in the post, which is regarding the method utilized by hackers to breach Kickstarter security.

“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.”

Understandably, Kickstarter has requested its members to immediately change their passwords.

In a public apology, the website’s CEO stated:

“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.”

It must be noted that as per the claim of the company’s CEO, actual passwords weren’t exposed to hackers but it was also possible for hackers to crack the encrypted password especially if it is a weak one.

The company also explained how users can change their passwords in their blog post. To learn more you can visit the site at this address and check out the security notice.

It's sad they had to be alerted by law enforcement and not their own internal security team. Shows how little they pay attention.

Wow, the first I learned, how has this not made bigger news? Anyways, IMO, kickstarter is dumb, you are just pre-ordering and hoping the items gets delivered.