#formspring hack

After finding out that 420,000 password digests of Formspring users' were revealed online, the popular Q&A social networking site 'Formspring' has decided to temporarily disable the same amount of user passwords affected by the aforementioned security breach. It's worth noting that the hashes were 'salted', an additional layer of security to make it hard for hackers to perform a dictionary attack on the hashes -- In Layman's terms, a salted hash containing the passwords will take a longer time (possibly even years) to decrypt. Furthermore, Formspring has immediately responded to the issue by sending password-reset emails to an unknown number of users and by further upgrading the security of their data servers to prevent similar breaches from occurring again. The DICT recently issued a strong warning to never open online banking apps or digital wallets while connected to public hotspots, as these networks lack basic security and can be hacked. Because these open networks don't require passwords to join, hackers can easily sneak onto the same connection. To build a stronger shield for your phone or laptop, Kaspersky suggests taking a few extra steps, like turning on your device's built-in firewall and using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to mix up your data so hackers can't read it. Read more in our articles including "FormSpring breached, exposing 420K passwords" and "DICT provides instructions to avoid getting hacked on public WiFi".