Early in October, the multimedia giant Adobe admitted to having suffered a data breach of significant proportions, with initial estimates from Adobe numbering it at 2.9 million compromised accounts. Just how significant is now becoming clearer as the count of those compromised is still increasing.

On 30 October, a spokesperson for Adobe admitted the following:

“So far, our investigation has confirmed that the attackers obtained access to Adobe IDs and (what were at the time valid), encrypted passwords for approximately 38 million active users.”

The spokesperson stated that:

“We have completed email notification of these users. We also have reset the passwords for all Adobe IDs with valid, encrypted passwords that we believe were involved in the incident—regardless of whether those users are active or not.”

They also went on to admit that source code for their Reader, Acrobat and Cold Fusion products had been stolen while part of the code for Photoshop has also been stolen.

On 8 November claims have been made that this affects not just c. 38 million accounts, but up to 150 million Adobe customers. If substantiated, this is considerable difference to the original numbers quoted.

So how does this affect staff and students at the University?

You may have already received an email from Adobe requesting that you reset your account details that will look like the picture below:

AdobeEmail

If you have received such a mail, then it is very important that you reset your password with Adobe as a priority as the data breach may have compromised your personal data and payment card details.

You are also recommended not to use your University login password with any external services.

If you have any further queries, contact ITS Help via the usual channels.

 

 

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