Flipboard is a service that aggregates all the news, articles, and publications that interest you from various blogs, newspapers, magazines, etc. and allows you to see them all together, without having to waste time searching for them yourself. Flipboard Inc., the company behind this service, announced to its users that it had been hacked, resulting in attackers gaining access to the company's systems. This is said to have been happening for more than nine months.
The company notified affected customers via email. The email stated that hackers had gained access to databases used by the company to store customer information.
The information contained in the databases included usernames, encrypted passwords , and, in some cases, emails or digital tokens that link Flipboard profiles to accounts on other services.
However, the company had taken care to protect users' passwords. Most passwords were encrypted with a strong hashing algorithm, codenamed bcrypt. Passwords encrypted in this way are very difficult to crack.
There were also some passwords that were not as protected, as they were encrypted with a weaker algorithm, SHA-1, but there weren't many.
Flipboard Inc. does not yet know the exact number of accounts affected by the breach. It said it is still investigating the case and trying to determine the total number. The only thing that is certain is that not all accounts were affected.
As a precautionary measure, the company has already begun the process of changing the passwords of all users, whether they have been affected or not.
Also, all digital tokens that users used to connect Flipboard to their other accounts (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.) have been replaced.
Flipboard said that the investigation so far has not shown any evidence that leads to the conclusion that other accountsassociated with Flipboard have been compromised.
Although the company had taken care to protect its customers to a certain extent, it cannot be denied that this was a fairly extensive breach, considering the length of time the hackers had access to the systems. A total of nine months.
The hackers breached the company's systems twice. The first time, they had access from June 2, 2018 to March 23, 2019, and the second time, from April 21 to April 22, 2019.
The incident was discovered by Flipboard on April 23, immediately after the second breach, as the company searched its database network.
Flipboard has also notified authorities about the breach.
