Dropbox Blames Security Breach on Password Reuse

The company is urging users to enable two-step authentication

  • By Matt Holden
  • Oct 15, 2014

Dropbox Blames Security Breach on Password ReuseDropbox is urging users to enable two-step authentication after reports that the login credentials for millions of its users has been compromised. A claim stated that hackers had stolen seven million user names and passwords from Dropbox.

A claim said hackers had stolen seven million user names and passwords from the online file-storage service. In a blog post, the company said hackers may have stolen usernames and passwords from other sites and attempted to use them on Dropbox.

Following the post, Dropbox reset the passwords of all users it believed to be affected by the attacks. “We’d previously detected these attacks and the vast majority of the passwords posted have been expired for some time now. All other remaining passwords have been expired as well.”

It is common for hackers to steal data from one site and find the same credentials work on other services, such as Dropbox in this case. After millions of email addresses and passwords were stolen from Adobe last year, Facebook forced many users to change their passwords.

About the Author

Matt Holden is an Associate Content Editor for 1105 Media, Inc. He received his MFA and BA in journalism from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. He currently writes and edits for Occupational Health & Safety magazine, and Security Today.

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