Dropbox Denies hacker breach responsible for hours long outage
Popular cloud storage service Dropbox went down Friday night for at least two hours due to what the company claims was an issue pertaining to internal maintenance, though one hacker group alleges to have caused the outage with a DDoS attack.
Shortly after users reported the outage at around 6 p.m. PST, a hacker group identifying themselves as The 1775 Sec tweeted that it had successfully compromised the Dropbox database. The post also linked to a supposed cache of user data uploaded to website Pastebin.com.
During the downtime, Dropbox users attempting to access the service through its web portal were automatically directed to a system status page displaying the image above. As of this writing, the webpage has been changed to reflect that "Dropbox is under maintenance" and attempts to log in are met with an Error (500) message.
When contacted by multiple media outlets, Dropbox maintained the leaked data claim was a hoax, a fact later confirmed by subsequent tweets from The 1775 Sec. The supposed hacker group later said it had used bots to carry out a distributed denial of service attack in honor of Internet prodigy and political activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide on Jan. 11, 2013.
At the time of his death, Swartz was facing charges for allegedly stealing over 1,000 academic journals from JSTOR through a Massachusetts Institute of Technology network. He supposedly planned to make the documents freely available to the public.
In an update to Dropbox's tech blog a around 8:30 p.m., the company announced the service was back online and once again refuted claims of leaked user data. An identical message was posted to Twitter at around the same time.
Shortly after users reported the outage at around 6 p.m. PST, a hacker group identifying themselves as The 1775 Sec tweeted that it had successfully compromised the Dropbox database. The post also linked to a supposed cache of user data uploaded to website Pastebin.com.
During the downtime, Dropbox users attempting to access the service through its web portal were automatically directed to a system status page displaying the image above. As of this writing, the webpage has been changed to reflect that "Dropbox is under maintenance" and attempts to log in are met with an Error (500) message.
When contacted by multiple media outlets, Dropbox maintained the leaked data claim was a hoax, a fact later confirmed by subsequent tweets from The 1775 Sec. The supposed hacker group later said it had used bots to carry out a distributed denial of service attack in honor of Internet prodigy and political activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide on Jan. 11, 2013.
At the time of his death, Swartz was facing charges for allegedly stealing over 1,000 academic journals from JSTOR through a Massachusetts Institute of Technology network. He supposedly planned to make the documents freely available to the public.
Dropbox site is back up! Claims of leaked user info are a hoax. The outage was caused during internal maintenance. Thanks for your patience!
-- Dropbox (@Dropbox) In an update to Dropbox's tech blog a around 8:30 p.m., the company announced the service was back online and once again refuted claims of leaked user data. An identical message was posted to Twitter at around the same time.
Comments
No data will have been taken. No proficient hacking team use DDoS attacks, these are just used by script kiddies who think it makes them hackers.
Duplicate post.
DDoS post ?
Not sure if someone was trying to gain root permissions through Dropbox or if the outage just gave the machine vertigo. Glad I said no though. Also, glad I don't store sensitive material in the cloud.
http://www.zdnet.com/dropbox-gets-hacked-again-7000001928/
My dropbox a/c is still off-line, some 16 hours since the 1st outage. Removed cookies, restarted computer, but sign-in only leads to the Error 500 screen. Sigh
This doesn't seem like a "maintenance issue".
At what point do all of these constant breaches of security begin to sour the public on online commerce? Local TV interviews over the Target data breach has made more than a few customers pledge to use cash only from now on. I my own case the majority of my financial business is done online, such as direct deposit of my retirement income, automatic payment of bills (utilities, credit cards, etc.) and I am reconsidering the use of online payments systems. It’s probably safer to just send a check in the mail.
At what point do all of these constant breaches of security begin to sour the public on online commerce? Local TV interviews over the Target data breach has made more than a few customers pledge to use cash only from now on. I my own case the majority of my financial business is done online, such as direct deposit of my retirement income, automatic payment of bills (utilities, credit cards, etc.) and I am reconsidering the use of online payments systems. It’s probably safer to just send a check in the mail.
Yes ... the mail is reliable and nothing ever gets stolen in the mail.
Yes ... the mail is reliable and nothing ever gets stolen in the mail.
Talking about what’s safer, not what’s safe. Nothing is safe but at this point it looks like traditional postal mail is a lot safer than online transactions.
What sort of nonsense is this?
In the mall I can put a bullet in the stomach of the person trying to rob me.
Which way should I point my gun to stop my information being stolen from someone else’s servers?
What an asinine response, jackass....
Jackass?
....In the mall I can put a bullet in the stomach of the person trying to rob me.
Which way should I point my gun to stop my information being stolen from someone else’s servers?
This explains a lot!
Dropbox = Crapbox.
They were caught lying few times in the past. I wouldn't trust anything these guys say.
"Also, glad I don't store sensitive material in the cloud."
Funny, at no point in this was I ever concerned. I just encrypt everything before it goes up into the cloud using nCrypted Cloud. Whether it's Dropbox or any cloud storage provider being hacked, I'm not worried ^^
Wow krupp you really are a charmer aren't you? Calling someone a jackass kind of shows maybe your are instead
Nothing? Are you sure about that?
Wow krupp you really are a charmer aren't you? Calling someone a jackass kind of shows maybe your are instead
Another zero day troll joins the forum? I guess we’ll find out real soon.