Adobe responds to reported hack, closes connectusers.com
Users are becoming accustomed to Adobe security flaws these days. After all the company did occupy five of the top-10 spots in the recent Kaspersky report. While the "occasional" Flash bug can be dealt with, having one's user information stolen is a whole different story, but that is exactly what sources are claiming and Adobe is confirming by shutting down the service in question.
"Adobe is currently investigating reports of a compromise of a Connectusers.com forum database. These reports first started circulating late during the day on Tuesday, November 13, 2012. At this point of our investigation, it appears that the Connectusers.com forum site was compromised by an unauthorized third party. It does not appear that any other Adobe services, including the Adobe Connect conferencing service itself, were impacted".
That service is actually, and ironically, an Adobe support forum at connectusers.com which, if you visit now will display a simple message stating that "We're sorry, the service you requested is currently unavailable. In the meantime please explore the other areas of Adobe.com. Thank you for your patience".
In the grand scheme of Adobe users the number, 150,000, may be small but it certainly isn't insignificant when it comes to stolen email addresses. As proof of the breach, the culprit released 644 of those addresses.
Adobe went on to advise their customers of some things that should be, but apparently are not, obvious when it comes to setting up an account on any web site.
"As a reminder, one of the best ways to protect yourself online is to follow password best practices and use different login credentials across different websites and services".
As we just saw earlier today with Skype, always use secure passwords, non-obvious security questions and answers, and perhaps even multiple email addresses that are not known by even your friends and especially not on mailing lists. It's a jungle out there. Be careful.
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