The popular code storage website GitHub is warning that some user accounts have been compromised by unknown hackers, reusing email addresses and passwords from other recent data breaches.
Indeed, GitHub has become the latest target of password reuse attacks after Facebook and Twitter CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
According to a blog post published by Shawn Davenport (VP of security at GitHub), an unknown hacker, using a list of email addresses and passwords obtained from data breaches from other online services, made a significant number of login attempts to GitHub on June 14.
After examining these connections, GitHub administrators determined that the attacker had gained access to some user accounts in order to gain illegal access to their data.
GitHub did not disclose the number of accounts exposed, although it does not appear that any data was lost, so the sources of your code repos are safe. As Davenport wrote:
“For some accounts, other personal information, including lists of accessible funds and organizations, may have been exposed.”
GitHub informed users that it has already reset the passwords of the accounts that were successfully accessed by the hacker and has already started communicating with all users to instruct them on how to get back into their account.
The company advised its users to practice good "password hygiene" and enable two-factor authentication for the service.
So maybe it's time to change your passwords for all the websites you use, especially if you use the same password for different websites.
