Antivirus company Avast has taken its community forum offline after a hacking attack compromised its database.
Usernames, email addresses, and passwords were exposed in this attack. The breach did not result in the leakage of financial information, licenses, or other financial data.
While passwords use hashes (SMF forum software uses SHA-1 to store passwords), it won't take long for a hacker to "crack" the hashes. The longer the password, the harder it is to crack.
According to the Avast blog post, the security breach affects less than 0.2% (about 400,000) of Avast users.
People who use the same password on other websites should change those passwords immediately.
Until now, their forum used an open source software called “Simple Machines Forum (SMF).” It appears that Avast was using an old version of SMF.
Avast stated that “We are now in the process of restoring the forum and moving to a different software platform,” which will be secure.
