It has happened, the one thing people skeptical about password managers feared: a large password manager company was hacked and the data breach was disastrous.
After months of trickling details out, LastPass now officially confirms a data breach in which people’s most sensitive data was stolen.
The LastPass data breach was first disclosed in August 2022, when the company announced a bad actor had stolen employee credentials to access some services but not customer data.
Now, the company says the hacker gained access to a lot more data: basically users’ password vaults and personal information. Fortunately, users are still somewhat safe but, if you use LastPass, you should take some additional measures to protect yourself.
“To date, we have determined that once the cloud storage access key and dual storage container decryption keys were obtained, the threat actor copied information from backup that contained basic customer account information and related metadata including company names, end-user names, billing addresses, email addresses, telephone numbers, and the IP addresses from which customers were accessing the LastPass service.
The threat actor was also able to copy a backup of customer vault data from the encrypted storage container which is stored in a proprietary binary format that contains both unencrypted data, such as website URLs, as well as fully-encrypted sensitive fields such as website usernames and passwords, secure notes, and form-filled data”
The company says that fortunately, that information is secured with 256-bit AES encryption and a hacker could only see them if they had an unique encryption key derived from your master password. That master password a user chooses to access their password vault is not stored or maintained by LastPass, so theoretically the only way in for an attacker would be to brute force guess that password.
“There is no evidence that any unencrypted credit card data was accessed. LastPass does not store complete credit card numbers and credit card information is not archived in this cloud storage environment,” says LastPass.
The company says that those with strong master passwords that follow security best practices have little reason to fear a hacker. If your security practices were lax, however, you should first change your master password, then go in and change every password in the vault.
You can read LastPass’ full announcement and instructions here.
Also read: People, Stop Using “Samsung” As the Password For Your Phone
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