A Large Number of Mozilla Developers’ Email Addresses and Password Hashes Leak Online

Mozilla officials have warned about a possible leak of email addresses and cryptographically protected passwords belonging to Mozilla developers last Friday. It is said that a database glitch occurred, which could have been the work of some hackers, and lead to some private information leaking online.

An estimated number of 76,000 email addresses and 4,000 password hashes are said to have been on a public server for about 30 days, starting from the 23rd of June. There appears to be no indication of the data being accessed, according to the officials, but they cannot rule out the possibility of the data being compromised.

“We are known for our commitment to privacy and security, and we are deeply sorry for any inconvenience or concern this incident may cause you,” director of developer relations, Stormy Peters, and operations security manager, Joe Stevensen, said in an official statement.

Although hackers who might have cracked the hashes cannot access the Mozilla Developer Network accounts, they might still be able to access other user accounts that are secured with the same password. The incident is said to have been caused when a data “sanitization” process failed, resulting in having the addresses and passwords dumped onto a publicly accessible server.

Thank you Arstechnica for providing us with this information
Image courtesy of Mozilla