The chat portal Knuddels, which has been online since 1999, was “hacked”!

As a result of this hack, 1.87 million login details ended up online. The following is announced in a forum post:

Dear cuddly friends,
We apologize after a hacker attack.

Knuddels.de fell victim to a successful hacker attack for the first time 19 years after it was founded. In the past few days, around 808,000 email addresses as well as 1,872,000 pseudonyms (so-called nicknames) and passwords have been published on the file sharing site “mega.nz”. Important: Another important piece of information about the email address: 330,000 email addresses were verified, these are the different, unique people who are affected.

“We have already taken all the necessary steps and informed the authorities. The protection of user data is our top priority,” says Holger Kujath, founder and managing director of Knuddels.de. “In particular, we sincerely apologize to our users. In order to prevent any further possible damage, we informed you of the data leak via Facebook, Instagram and our public forum a few hours after the hacker attack. Transparency is Knuddels’ top priority.”

It has not yet been possible to determine where or who the published member data comes from. Knuddels.de has further strengthened its already very high security standards in the last few hours. “We understand that the data our community entrusts to us must be secure. We will do everything in our power to clear things up and regain trust,” continued Kujath.

On September 5th, previously unknown perpetrators initially published 8,000 member data on the document platform “Pastebin”. The entry there consists of the pseudonyms, password, email address (in 57% of cases), information about the first name (41%) and information about the place of residence (30%).

On Friday September 7th, Knuddels received information that another article had been published on the website “mega.nz”. This is a data set with 1,872,000 pseudonyms. Due to the changed situation, Knuddels.de decided to take further measures. These were among others:

  • All members should be informed by email as soon as possible
  • Require all members to set a new password when logging in
  • Members who do not log in using a device we recognize will receive a link via email or SMS to set a new password

What should you do now?

The most important first step is to change your passwords.
If you have already done this today, everything is fine. If you haven't done this yet, please do it immediately. Please simply log in to the chat and follow the instructions there. If you use the same or very similar password on other sites, please change it there immediately.

What was published?

In addition to the nickname and password, the published data also includes (if available) email address (in 57% of cases), city (in 30% of cases) and name in the profile (in 41% of cases).

What are we doing?

We took immediate security measures and are continuing to work to determine how this data could have been made public. If there is a security problem, we will fix it as quickly as possible.

(source)

Users were also informed about this on Facebook:

As we wrote this morning, Knuddels' account details have been published on the Internet.
When we became aware of the publication, we immediately took security measures, such as asking you to change your password. As we now know, the data of users who had an account or nickname at Knuddels.de on July 20, 2018 were published.

What should you do now?
The most important first step is to change your passwords.
If you have already done this today, everything is fine. If you haven't done this yet, please do it immediately. Please simply log in to the chat and follow the instructions there. If you use the same or very similar password on other sites, please change it there immediately.

What was published?
In addition to the nickname and password, the published data also includes (if available) email address (in 57% of cases), city (in 30% of cases) and name in the profile (in 41% of cases).

What are we doing?
We took immediate security measures and are continuing to work to determine how this data could have been made public. If there is a security problem, we will fix it as quickly as possible.

Kind regards,
your cuddle team
( source )


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )