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Question-and-answer site Quora has been struck by a massive and malicious data breach which snagged the personal information of 100 million users.
Quora has announced that a “malicious” third-party obtained unauthorized access to its systems, exposing data to 100 million user accounts. Hackers captured usernames, passwords, email addresses, as well as, have potentially also gained data that is linked from other social networks.
Additionally, the hackers captured all of the data connected with a user’s public contributions, such as questions, answers, upvotes, private contributions, downvotes and private messages.
In an FAQ about the hack, the company said: “Not all Quora users are affected, and some were impacted more than others.”
“It is our responsibility to make sure things like this don’t happen, and we failed to meet that responsibility. We recognize that in order to maintain user trust, we need to work very hard to make sure this does not happen again,” Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo said in a statement published on the company blog late Monday. “It is our responsibility to make sure things like this don’t happen, and we failed to meet that responsibility.”
“We recognize that in order to maintain user trust, we need to work very hard to make sure this does not happen again. There’s little hope of sharing and growing the world’s knowledge if those doing so cannot feel safe and secure, and cannot trust that their information will remain private,” D’Angelo continued. “There’s little hope of sharing and growing the world’s knowledge if those doing so cannot feel safe and secure, and cannot trust that their information will remain private.”
Quora’s CEO Adam D’Angelo said the company has notified law enforcement of the incident, as well as, has retained a digital forensics and security firm.
The company said it is also contacting all of its users whose information was compromised in the breach, as well as, will force its users who use passwords to reset them.
Quora was founded by former Facebook employees. In 2017, the company was valued at $1.8 billion following a round of funding that raised $85 million. Last September, Quora announced it had surpassed 300 million unique monthly visitors.
