eHarmony hacked, password breach

Dating site eHarmony have said that they were exposed in a breach yesterday, following shortly after the Linkedin password problems earlier this week.

Becky Teraoka of eHarmony's corporate communications said “After investigating reports of compromised passwords, we have found that a small fraction of our user base has been affected.”

They haven't said how many of their users were affected and they have since reset the passwords.

eHarmony's exposed data is cryptographic representations of passwords, called hashes, these are generated by an algorithm. The hashes can however be changed back into the original password by using free decoding software. The less characters in the password, the easier it will be to crack.

eHarmony's 1.5 million password hashes were posted on the forum of a Russian password cracking website called InsidePro.

Hackers on InspirePro asked for help in cracking the password hashes, according to ArsTechnica. Security researchers said it was closer to 6.5 million people, although some of the hashes were copies, so it would bring the number down to 5.8 million.

Kitguru says: Crackers are having a ball this month.

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