Popular cloud storage firm Dropbox has been hacked, with over 68m users’ email addresses and passwords leaking on to the internet.

The attack took place during 2012. At the time Dropbox reported a collection of user’s email addresses had been stolen. It did not report that passwords had been stolen as well.

The dump of passwords came to light when the database was picked up by security notification service Leakbase, which sent it to Motherboard.

The independent security researcher and operator of the Have I been pwned? data leak database, Troy Hunt, verified the data discovering both his account details and that of his wife.

Hunt said: “There is no doubt whatsoever that the data breach contains legitimate Dropbox passwords, you simply can’t fabricate this sort of thing.”

Dropbox sent out notifications last week to all users who had not changed their passwords since 2012. The company had around 100m customers at the time, meaning the data dump represents over two-thirds of its user accounts. At the time Dropbox practiced good user data security practice, encrypting the passwords and appears to have been in the process of upgrading the encryption from the SHA1 standard to a more secure standard called bcrypt.

Half the passwords were still encrypted with SHA1 at the time of the theft.

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