Home technology cyber-security data Breach of Imgur accounts took place in 2014

Data Breach of Imgur accounts took place in 2014

Cyber Security

CIO Bulletin
2017-11-27

The image sharing site, Imgur, was hacked way back in 2014. The data breach involved hackers stealing nearly 1.7 million users’ email address and passwords. The company claims that it was notified about the hack only recently, which was last week.

In a Twitter post, the company updated the data breach, “On November 23, we were notified about a data breach on Imgur that occurred in 2014. While we are still actively investigating the intrusion, we wanted to inform you as quickly as possible as to what we know and what we are doing in response.”

Roy Sehgal, Imgur's chief operating officer confirmed the hack and said that the company was still investigating on how the information was compromised. Imgur has its suspects on an older hashing algorithm, SHA-256. The company said that since the hack came to its notice, the algorithm has been updated.

Imgur has nearly 150 million total active users and the hacked data of 1.7 million users seems a small number in comparison. Nevertheless, a breach is a breach and action must be taken. Imgur also said that no other personal information was compromised. Since it never asked for people’s real names, addresses or phone number, nothing else was stolen.