Antichat Hacker Forum Breach Reveals Weak Passwords
Ordinary Internet users frequently are scolded for choosing weak, easily-guessed passwords. New research suggests that hackers in the cyber underground are also likely to pick lame passwords for their favorite online forums.
Last month, KrebsOnSecurity was sent a massive database file that the source said was the user database of Antichat.ru, a Russian language hacker forum that has attracted more than 41,000 users since its founding nearly a decade ago. By matching the user names in the database with those listed in the public pages of the forum, I discovered that I’d been given a snapshot of all Antichat user information and private messages prior to June 2010, when Antichat.ru apparently experienced a forum compromise.
