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The Dropbox hack is real

troyhunt.com

221–230 of 557 posts

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#221
post #40
post #26

It was pretty obvious the dropbox hack was real several years ago, because lots of spam mail started arriving at my dropbox-unique email almost immediately after the breach. I changed my email to another unique address quickly back then. Unique-per-service email addresses work pretty well as a canary for breaches. Just make sure there is more uniqueness than just the service name to such addresses, or someone could s…

I cannot agree more, I do the same, and invite everyone else to do so. - Useful as a canary of which website has been breached - Useful as a canary of which website sold your details - and if your details are in the wild, you can stop the spam by deleting the address Credit cards should work the same way: a unique authorization code specific to this vendor or this transaction and useless to any other actor.

Re: credit cards, unless you insist on using debit cards for some reason, who cares if they are compromised.

If someone steals my credit card, AMEX has a problem. I'll take reasonable care, but I'm not going to generate transaction specific numbers or whatever unless there is a strong incentive to do so.

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#222
post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although that feels secure, it's a poor way, security by obscurity is weak. As soon as some one realize, all your passwords will be revealed...

What can be better alternative? IMO using something like 1Password/Lastpass is less secure because it then only takes someone to get my master password to get all my other passwords.

They would also need access to the machine which you have your vault stored on which would be your laptop and your phone and nothing else.

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#223
post #196
post #26

It was pretty obvious the dropbox hack was real several years ago, because lots of spam mail started arriving at my dropbox-unique email almost immediately after the breach. I changed my email to another unique address quickly back then. Unique-per-service email addresses work pretty well as a canary for breaches. Just make sure there is more uniqueness than just the service name to such addresses, or someone could s…

> Unique-per-service email addresses work pretty well and they're so easy with Gmail - anything following a '+' character after your username (or alias, if using your own/company domain) will go to the same box, but keep the distinct address. Unfortunately, depressingly many sites validate email fields, and get it wrong - thinking '+' is not allowed. IMO it's not even worth trying to get an email regex (or other vali…

Other services also let you use the alias as a subdomain: example@alias.gmail.com. Wish Gmail added that feature. Do they have any place I can sent a feature request?

Another feature of Gmail is you can place dots anywhere in your email and it will still reach you: ex.am.ple@gmail.com. I haven't seen services that reject that so it is what I use when I can't use a +.

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#224
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot agree more, I do the same, and invite everyone else to do so. - Useful as a canary of which website has been breached - Useful as a canary of which website sold your details - and if your details are in the wild, you can stop the spam by deleting the address Credit cards should work the same way: a unique authorization code specific to this vendor or this transaction and useless to any other actor.

Is there a service (email host) that can give you "infinite email aliases"? (Yes, I know about the '+' in gmail, but I suspect the word is out on it)

https://dnt.abine.com/

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#225
post #203

> As for Dropbox, they seem to have handled this really well. I'm biased, but I can't agree with this. From what I can tell, there are two communications from Dropbox -- one in 2012 [1] and one last week [2]. In 2012 they did not disclose that hashes were stolen, so I don't see how it's really relevant. In the latest communication, they don't actually explain the risk to the user. They say it is "purely as a preventa…

See my comment here: https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/50ggbn/the_dropbox_...

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#226
post #203

> As for Dropbox, they seem to have handled this really well. I'm biased, but I can't agree with this. From what I can tell, there are two communications from Dropbox -- one in 2012 [1] and one last week [2]. In 2012 they did not disclose that hashes were stolen, so I don't see how it's really relevant. In the latest communication, they don't actually explain the risk to the user. They say it is "purely as a preventa…

>> "Users need to know their passwords are exposed, and must be reset not as a preventative measure, but because they are almost certain to be compromised."

This should be assumed regardless of what is known if it's know a breach happened; meaning basic password hygiene should be followed, and I'm the case of Dropbox, if a user had any plaintext files with passwords to other accounts (yes, people still do this) - they need to change those passwords too.

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#227
What really bothers be about this is that Dropbox hasn't bothered to reset the sessions. Even after I manually reset my password (which I wasn't prompted or forced to do btw), all my apps (iPhone, desktop etc) that have existing sessions wasn't expired. So for all I know, a hacker might already have an open session to my Dropbox and changing the password will not fix that

Clarification edit: I did receive the e-mail from Dropbox letting me know that I should change my password, but when visiting dropbox.com I was already logged in and wasn't prompted to perform the pw reset

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#228
post #227

What really bothers be about this is that Dropbox hasn't bothered to reset the sessions. Even after I manually reset my password (which I wasn't prompted or forced to do btw), all my apps (iPhone, desktop etc) that have existing sessions wasn't expired. So for all I know, a hacker might already have an open session to my Dropbox and changing the password will not fix that Clarification edit: I did receive the e-mail…

You can see all the existing sessions and authorised applications from their website. It is not perfect and it is extra work to go through those and delete them, but at least there is a way.

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#229
post #50
post #6

Since lots of people will be rotating passwords, this is probably a good time to set up Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) as well. I recommend Authy as your 2FA app, as it lets you set a backup password, which you can use to move your 2FA tokens between devices. For your critical services, keeping encrypted copies of your backup codes is a must.

2FA is a major inconvenience. The login process goes from 1-2 sec to 30sec. Sometimes a lot longer (some 2FA do not seem to think it is critical to send the email or txt msg right away, and even when they do, email servers do not really work real time, and then you have the time it takes to find your phone, unlock, decline twice the iOS update prompt, go to the right app, find the right msg, copy the code, check it i…

> 2FA is a major inconvenience. The login process goes from 1-2 sec to 30sec.

That's definitely true, and it's definitely annoying. But one is not logging in every day (or even, I hope, every month: 90-day cookies are safe enough).

Re: The Dropbox hack is real

#230
post #105

Why isn't Dropbox reporting this? I'd have more respect for them if they were more honest about this.

They sent both me and my wife an email a couple of days ago regarding this, and have a Help Center page[0] for it: Hi , We’re reaching out to let you know that if you haven’t updated your Dropbox password since mid-2012, you’ll be prompted to update it the next time you sign in. This is purely a preventative measure, and we’re sorry for the inconvenience. To learn more about why we’re taking this precaution, please v…

Thanks. Found the email in my junk folder. Cool, glad they sent something.
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