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Kickstarter Suffers Security Breach
An alert is going out to Kickstarter users that their e-mail and mail addresses may have been exposed during a recent security breach.
According to Kickstarter's CEO, Yancey Strickler, no credit card information was compromised, but e-mail addresses, mailing addresses, and encrypted passwords were revealed. Actual passwords were not revealed. You can check out the message sent out to Kickstarter users from Strickler below.
On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers' data. Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.
No credit card data of any kind was accessed by hackers. There is no evidence of unauthorized activity of any kind on your account. The only thing revealed in this breach was your email address.
We’re incredibly sorry that this happened. We set a very high bar for how we serve our community, and this incident is frustrating and upsetting. We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come. We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.
Kickstarter is a vibrant community like no other, and we can’t thank you enough for being a part of it. Please let us know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. You can reach us at accountsecurity@kickstarter.com.
Thank you,
Yancey Strickler
Kickstarter CEO
In an expanded notice on its website, Kickstarter is recommending that users change their passwords and offers instructions on how to do so.
[Source: Kickstarter]
Our Take
Security leaks are always concerning, but compared to the recent Target debacle, and the breach that hit Sony a few years ago, this one is pretty tame. If Strickler is accurate and the only thing that was exposed was e-mail addresses and mailing addresses (who knows if the hackers got in further than the folks at Kickstarter have been able to discover), your only fear should be the reception of e-mails or possibly mail you didn't necessarily sign up for. Hopefully, the breach is as minor as it is being represented here, but it's never a bad idea to keep an eye on your bank accounts, etc., if you have a Kickstarter account.
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