Flipboard Hack Exposed Account Details On Users For Nine Months

Flipboard is a news aggregator app, and the company has announced that it fell victim to hacks. The hacks potentially exposed user account information and left that information where it could be copied for nine months. The exposed user details included Flipboard user names, encrypted passwords, and email addresses.

Flipboard was clear that no social security numbers, credit card details, or other financial data was lost in the breach because the app doesn't collect any of that information. The company published a FAQ about the hack that noted as a precaution it has reset all user passwords, despite the fact that passwords stored in the database hackers had access to were cryptographically protected.

All users of the service will be required to choose a new password the next time they log into Flipboard. All digital tokens used to connect to third-party accounts have been deleted or replaced, and the company says it is firmly committed to security and protecting account information. Flipboard also says that additional safeguards have been put in place to prevent this sort of breach from happening again.

Unauthorized intrusions happened between June 2, 2018, and March 23, 2019, with another intrusion happening between April 21 and April 22, 2019. Flipboard has notified law enforcement and hired an outside security firm to further investigate. It's not clear at this time how many user accounts were impacted in the hack. The company is still in the process of figuring out how many accounts were affected. It said in April 2018 that it had 145 million monthly users.

Hacking is a big problem in the technology world and recently, lost NSA hacking tools were deployed against the city of Baltimore. The tool used in that hack, and others around the world, was based on the NSA's lost EternalBlue tool.