Quora Breach Hits 100M User Accounts Containing Highly Personal Data

The latest mega data breach hit question-and-answer portal Quora, which reported 100 million user accounts were accessed by a malicious third-party. The data also contains highly personal details about customers.

Question-and-answer portal Quora is now the latest company to report that customer records have been compromised in a mega-data breach. In this case, about 100 million user accounts, which contained an unusual amount of personal details, have been accessed by a malicious third party.
In a
December 4 post
, Quora CEO Adam DAngelo wrote that the company discovered the breach on Friday, November 30, and that 100 million user accounts were involved. The incident remains under investigation, although details about the security breach remain scarce.
The company is also working to contact users affected by the breach.
(Source:
Flickr
)
It is our responsibility to make sure things like this dont happen, and we failed to meet that responsibility, DAngelo wrote in his
mea culpa
.
The type of information compromised in this breach falls into three categories:
Account information, including name, email address, encrypted or hashed password and data imported from linked networks when authorized by users
Public content and actions, including questions, answers, comments and upvotes published on the site
Finally, non-public content and actions, including answer requests, downvotes and direct messages.
Mukul Kumar, CISO and vice president of Cyber Practice at security firm
Cavirin
, noted in an email that the information the attackers were able to access was unusual in that it could help someone build a more complete profile of a potential identity theft victim.
The disturbing thing about this hack is that, beyond basic personal data, the Q&A database may be mined for psychographics that can be used to build a more complete profile of the victim, Kumar wrote to Security Now. This is valuable data for identity theft, or identifying potential password challenge questions. So, beyond maintaining ones personal cyber posture via password hygiene and additional diligence, another area now to consider is just how much to share on forums, such as Quora.
As large as the Quora data breach is, its not the biggest thats happened within the last week.
That honor goes to Marriott, which disclosed that a database housing information on its Starwood customers was breached several years ago, with the companys security department only recently discovering the incident. This attack appears to have affected about 500 million customers. (See
Marriott: 500 Million Guest Records Compromised in Data Breach
.)
Additionally, within the last week, Dell disclosed that its Dell.com website was breached, although its not clear what, if any, data was disclosed. The company did not release a number associated with its data breach, which also remains under investigation. (See
Dell: Your Personal Info May, or May Not, Have Been Stolen
.)
Related posts:
Marriotts Due Diligence Failure Led to Massive Data Breach
UK & Dutch Authorities Slap Uber With Fines Over 2016 Data Breach
HSBC Data Breach Shows Failure to Protect Passwords & Access Controls
Facebook Revises Data Breach Number Down to 30M Users
— Scott Ferguson is the managing editor of Light Reading and the editor of
Security Now
. Follow him on Twitter
@sferguson_LR
.

Last News
▸ IoT Devices on Average Have 25 Vulnerabilities ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security	▸ DHS-funded SWAMP scans code for bugs. ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security	▸ Debunking Machine Learning in Security. ◂ Discovered: 23/12/2024 Category: security

**Cyber Security Categories**
Google Dorks Database	Exploits Vulnerability	Exploit Shellcodes

CVE List

Tools/Apps

News/Aarticles

Phishing Database

Deepfake Detection

Trends/Statistics & Live Infos

Tags:
Quora Breach Hits 100M User Accounts Containing Highly Personal Data