Not much the news about graphics cards, but it might be imporant to some of you. Apparently NVIDIA forums were hacked last week, and some very imporant user data were accessed and stolen. That would also include my account…
Thankfully, passwords were hashed with salt values, so unless your password was very simple, it would take a lot of time to read them. Nevertheless, it’s a very uncommon thing to happen to such a big company and will somehow leave a blemish on the security level of NVIDIA forums.
Here’s what NVIDIA is saying:
Posted July 12, 2012
NVIDIA suspended operations of the NVIDIA Forums (forums.nvidia.com) last week.We did this in response to suspicious activity and immediately began an investigation. We apologize that our continuing investigation is taking this long. Know that we are working around the clock to ensure that secure operations can be restored.
Our investigation has identified that unauthorized third parties gained access to some user information, including:
username
email address
hashed passwords with random salt value
public-facing “About Me” profile informationNVIDIA did not store any passwords in clear text. “About Me” optional profiles could include a user’s title, age, birthdate, gender, location, interests, email and website URL – all of which was already publicly accessible.
NVIDIA is continuing to investigate this matter and is working to restore the Forums as soon as possible. We are employing additional security measures to minimize the impact of future attacks.
All user passwords for our Forums will be reset when the system comes back online. At that time, an email with a temporary password, along with instructions on how to change it, will be sent to the user’s registered email address.
As a precautionary measure, we strongly recommend that you change any identical passwords that you may be using elsewhere.
NVIDIA does not request sensitive information by email. Do not provide personal, financial or sensitive information (including new passwords) in response to any email purporting to be sent by an NVIDIA employee or representative.
We will post updates about this matter here. For any questions, email us at [email protected].
For technical support, go to www.nvidia.com/support.
