Adobe Breach worse than we thought

Turns out that Adobe breach is way worse than we thought — 38M passwords stolen

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Chip Chipman

An Adobe data breach is worse than originally thought - some 38 million passwords were compromised.

Jon Xavier

Web Producer- Silicon Valley Business Journal

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Earlier this month, Adobe announced it was hacked, saying it had lost customer records that included credit card numbers for 2.8 million users. Now it's looking like this was just the tip of the iceberg.
A password hash that looks like it contains as many as 150 million Adobe usernames and passwords was posted to an Anonymous bulletin board frequented by hackers. Security blogger KrebsOnSecurity followed up with the company, and was told that Adobe has confirmed that at least 38 million active user accounts were affected by the breach. The company is offering free credit monitoring for a year to people who had their cards stolen, but as KrebsOnSecurity notes, that's not a perfect defense against identity theft, which often means opening new accounts in the victim's name
Of less concern to users, but potentially more troubling to Adobe — it looks like the electronic thieves also made off with some of the Adobe Photoshop source code, adding to earlier thefts of Reader and Acrobat source code. That's obviously a competitive problem, since that source code could now end up in the hands of competitors, particularly in foreign markets where enforcement is more lax. It also could lead to more software piracy, as having the source code potentially makes it easier circumvent the company's rights management schemes.
It goes without saying, but if you have an Adobe account, you need to change your password now. And not just for that account, but for any other account which might share the password. The big danger of a password breach isn't necessarily that hackers could break into that account, it's that they could then use that info to guess your password naming convention and then break into other accounts, and potentially more troubling ones like your bank.

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Jon Xavier is Web Producer at the Business Journal. His phone number is 408.299.1826.