Flipboard resets passwords after months of server access by criminals

The personal data of millions of Flipboard users is potentially out there. Internet criminals had access to the system of the social medium for more than nine months. It is not clear exactly how many users are involved.

The company reports this in a blog post. The hackers allegedly stole usernames, email addresses and passwords. Also, tokens for external applications linked to Flipboard would have been funneled away.

Flipboard says it is still investigating exactly how many users were affected by the hack. As a precaution, the passwords of all users of the platform have been reset. Users must change that as soon as they open Flipboard again. The passwords of users who created or changed a password before March 14, 2012 were hashed with the now considered insecure sha-1. New or changed passwords are hashed and salted with bcrypt.

Flipboard says criminals were in the company’s systems between June 2, 2018 and March 23, 2019. That would also have happened on April 21 and 22 of this year. Flipboard does not say whether it concerns the same people.