AOL announced today that it was recently hit by a cyberattack. It is now working with federal authorities to investigate the attack. Meanwhile the company urges millions of its users to change their passwords and security questions as hackers were able to steal the information. The company claims that only about 2 percent of its accounts were compromised.
The company hasn’t revealed just how many email accounts are registered on its system. Though it did reveal that hackers were able to steal email addresses, postal addresses, answers to security questions for password reset as well as encrypted passwords. AOL claims that there is no indication of encryption on this data being broken.
The smart thing for users to do now would be to immediatley change their password and security questions on AOL. If they happen to use the same passwords or security question across other online profiles, including but not limited to social networks, then they should go through the tedious task of changing every bit of information that is likely to have been compromised in the cyberattack.
AOL came to know of the security breach after it noticed an increase in the amount of spam appearing as spoofed emails from AOL addresses. It then notified federal authorities and now an investigation is underway.
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