The Adobe breach last month by hackers has affected nearly 38 million users. It is feared that the hacking may also compromise users' other online account details on different social networking and e-commercial sites.
The Adobe attack in October can have repercussions for other social networking companies and online retailers too. The stolen log-in details of Adobe users can be misused by the hackers to get into their other online accounts.
"The attack against Adobe's customer database illustrates the extreme risk and vulnerability we accept as we continue to depend on passwords to secure our personal information and keep us safe online," said Michael Barrett, president of the FIDO alliance, an industry consortium that deals with technology authentication and password security issues for popular brands like -eBay, Pay Pal, Lenovo, and Google, reports Wall Street Journal.
Lastpass, a password security firm revealed last week that the company found email addresses, and encrypted passwords of the Adobe users saved on an underground website, according to a recent post on NDTV. Latpass warns that the hackers may send in phishing mails to collect passwords from susceptible users.
Internet security advisers have been repeatedly warning online users not to use similar passwords for different accounts but people are still taking the easy way out. This way it is easy to remember passwords. For hackers it becomes easier to reshuffle the characters a bit and access the passwords for other accounts of the users.
The social networking giant, Facebook, suspects that the Adobe hacking might heavily impact its users too. "Recently, there was a security incident on another website unrelated to Facebook. Facebook was not directly affected by the incident, but your Facebook account is at risk because you were using the same password in both places," said Jay Nancarrow, Facebook spokesperson.
Diapers. Com, an Amazon enterprise has already issued new login information for some of its customers who all might be affected by the Adobe breach.
Some companies preserve their client details in encrypted form. This makes it difficult for people to steal passwords. For Adobe, the user details were saved on a back-up system with weaker encryption power that made it easier for hackers to access the account information.