Your Dropbox Account May Have Been Hacked (UPDATE: Dropbox Says No)

Update: Dropbox has posted the following:

Dropbox wasn’t hacked.

Recent news articles claiming that Dropbox was hacked aren’t true. Your stuff is safe. The usernames and passwords referenced in these articles were stolen from unrelated services, not Dropbox. Attackers then used these stolen credentials to try to log in to sites across the internet, including Dropbox. We have measures in place to detect suspicious login activity and we automatically reset passwords when it happens.

Attacks like these are one of the reasons why we strongly encourage users not to reuse passwords across services. For an added layer of security, we always recommend enabling 2 step verification on your account.

A subsequent list of usernames and passwords has been posted online. We’ve checked and these are not associated with Dropbox accounts.

Our original story follows …

Hundreds of Dropbox passwords may have been leaked online.

The Next Web discovered a Reddit comment thread Monday evening that linked to a site where hundreds of usernames and passwords for the storage site were revealed in plain text. (The Reddit thread is easy to find, but since it links to lists of the hacked passwords, we are not linking to it here.)

According to the thread, those responsible for the hack are asking for Bitcoin donations (for some reason), but haven’t had much luck. As of this writing, they have raised 0.0001 bitcoin, or about 4 cents.

Though the cloud storage company has not yet posted anything about the hack, it did disable the listed passwords and is forcing users of those accounts to create new passwords when they next use Dropbox, according to The Next Web.

The perpetrators of the hack claim they have 7 million compromised passwords. If you are a Dropbox user, now is as good a time as ever to change your password and enable two-step verification on the site.

Among the many passwords exposed in the hack, one of the worst was 123abc. For advice on how to create and use far stronger passwords, check out our comprehensive guide to fixing your passwords. Also helpful: a guide to protecting your home network from hackers. Feel free to send the link to Dropbox, too.

We’ll keep you updated on this story once we hear back from Dropbox.

Follow Alyssa Bereznak on Twitter or email her.