Hackers stole passwords from Slovak website

A GROUP of hackers managed to steal passwords from the Slovak website SkTorrent, a site related to downloading and uploading files.

Illustrative stock photoIllustrative stock photo (Source: Sme)

People using it should quickly change their passwords as hackers obtained the identities of 118,000 users. More than one-third of them also open access to the email addresses at Seznam.cz and Email.cz domains. If attackers obtain access to email, they can get also to other services which can reset the original password.

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SkTorrent saved passwords in an uncoded form.

People should use different passwords for different services, expert in cyber security Peter Košinár told the Sme daily, adding that effective tools are a password administrator and a two-factor identification.

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He was joined in this opinion also by Zuzana Hošalová, spokeswoman of the cyber security company Eset, who added that in Slovakia, the legalisation that would order online service to inform their clients on security incidents is missing.

SkTorrent failed to inform its clients about the attack. The website has, however, been long been suspected of stealing data from its rivals and spying on registered users. Moreover, background infromation suggest that saving the passwords as uncoded could have been intentional, as the system on which the service is operating is set to code them by default. Companies which care about safety of data do not save passwords on their servers, Sme wrote. 

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