CafePress was hacked in February last year. As a result, the CafePress data breach exposed usernames and passwords. Well, there’s more you need to know.
Data breaches happen occasionally. However, if hit, you’ll be in jeopardy and the risk is costly.
In CafePress’s case, a lot of information has been compromised. But, there’s always a flip side, where we can learn from those mistakes.
We will look further at the CafePress data breach. Also, we will add security measures to prevent and monitor your account from hackers.
More From The Breach
The custom merchandise retailer CafePress endangered data that included 23 million unique email addresses.
The data includes some records also containing names, physical addresses, phone numbers, and passwords stored as SHA-1 hashes.
Bad Habit
Well, we have that habit of using the same passwords on multiple accounts. As a result, it’s possible that hackers have had access to other platforms as well. How?
Of course, a simple dictionary scan with common numbers and special characters are likely to give the hacker the password you used.
The Role Of HIBP
HIBP, haveibeenpawned, offers a breach database service. If not for them, many of us wouldn’t hear about the CafePress data breach.
Truth be told, most people only heard of it when emails from HIBP went out.
The Problem, Once Again
Yes, we are once again confronted not just with a data breach, but the length of time that it took the company to say anything about it.
Moreover, we don’t know whether any security has been updated or changed. Also, we are left hanging if the root cause was identified and addressed.
Why Has It Taken So Long?
According to the Mozilla Firefox Monitor service, “It can sometimes take months or years for credentials exposed in a data breach to appear on the dark web. Breaches get added to our database as soon as they have been discovered and verified.”
As a result, instead of us hearing from CafePress itself, we heard about the breach from HIBP.
Moreover, the majority of data breaches often go unnoticed.
HIBP’s Goal
Troy Hunt, the creator of HIBP, hopes to spread awareness by adding the CafePress data breach to the news.
HIBP hopes that people will take the necessary steps to safeguard their information.
Moreover, the breach occurred in February. But, there can be a long lead time of months or even years before the data is disclosed publicly.
Yes, Have I Been Pwned will always attempt to alert you.
How To Monitor Your Account’s Safety?
Through the HIBP website, monitoring your account is now easy.
Just head over to their website. Then, enter any email addresses you want to check. After that, the database will quickly return information on any breaches that your details were found in.
What Should You Do Now?
Well, we are now on the part where we need to act. Either for companies or users, you need to use reasonable security practices.
These practices include education about multi-factor authentication and using password managers to generate a password per site.
Lastly, upgrading applications and libraries to the latest secure versions.
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