A lot of Netflix customers have received prompts from the entertainment company to change their passwords after several lists of account information have been posted online.
Netflix Responded Quickly
Netflix customers have received emails from the company prompting them to change their passwords. This has happened after an account breach of another company has published several lists bearing usernames and passwords for Netflix accounts. The victim company has not been revealed, nor the number of affected customers. The company has stated that this is a precautionary measure which means that it is possible that none of the compromised accounts have been used by hackers.
Big companies usually use carious mechanisms that scan the Web (and the Dark Web) for information regarding to database leaks and web site breaches. If Netflix have received reports that accounts have been compromised they might initiate such a prompt. Right now we do not know which site is affected by the hacker attack, however there are several possibilities that we can explore:
- Database breach or web site leak holding personal or company accounts that are not private in nature
- Compromised cloud storage files that contain account credentials stored in plaintext or decrypted formats
- Stolen or compromised password manager files containing the account credentials
It would be appropriate for users to know that such prompts are not incidents. If the hackers have not been able to utilize the account credentials, then the users have nothing to be alarmed of, as they have already changed their passwords.
This is one more reason to try to use Password Managers which can safely store and manage account credentials.
We would like to offer you some secure solutions on how to manage your accounts:
Create Random Passwords with DiceWare
How to Use KeePass to Store and Manage Your Passwords
