Adobe suffers database leak, user forum taken offline
The hacker says he undertook the attack to shed light on how slow Adobe is to fix security issues after being alerted to them -- and says Yahoo is next.
Adobe has temporarily closed one of its user forums after a hacker caused a data breach.
The forum, Connectusers.com, allows Adobe customers to share information and opinions about its Connect online conferencing service, which is used to host Web conferences, e-learning, and webinars.
However, after a hacker hailing from Egypt posted a purported file dump containing user details from the site on Pastebin, Adobe pre-emptively took down the forum and said it will reset the passwords of affected site members.
The file dump, posted by the alleged hacker using the alias ViruS_HimA, apparently contains over 150,000 e-mail addresses and passwords from Adobe employees, the U.S. military and companies including Google and NASA. E-mails ending with adobe.com, .mil, and .gov have only been released as a screenshot, with the Egyptian hacker claiming they are "not looking to ruin Adobe['s] business."
According to the Hacker News, ViruS_HimA uploaded a php shell to the Web site, and then was able to look for database configuration files in order to steal the forum credentials, before exporting and dumping the database.
ViruS_HimA said he undertook the attack to shed light on how slow Adobe is to fix security issues after it receives security notifications, sometimes taking three to four months to patch vulnerabilities.
The hacker also claims that Yahoo is the next target.
Adobe apologized for the hack, saying that although the forum was compromised by an "unauthorized third party", it does not appear that any other services, including the Adobe Connect conferencing service itself, have been affected.
The company is investigating reports of the hack and is "working diligently to restore forum services as soon as possible," it added.