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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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How exactly are these 6.9M users at fault? They opted in to a feature of the platform that had nothing to do with their passwords.
On top of that, the company should have enforced strong passwords and forced 2FA for all accounts. What they're doing is victim blaming.
users knowingly opted into a feature that had a clear privacy risk.
Strong passwords often aren't at issue, password re-use is. If un-{salted, hashed} passwords were compromised in a previous breach, then it doesn’t matter how strong those passwords are.
Every user who was compromised:
A further subset of users failed to use a unique and strong password.
A 2FA token (think Matrix) might have helped here, other than that, individuals need to take a greater responsibility for personal privacy. This isn’t an essential service like water, banking, electricity etc. This is a place to upload your DNA profile…
As I said elsewhere, the company implemented this feature and apparently did not do absolutely jack about the increased risk of account compromise deriving from it. If I would sit in a meeting discussing this feature I would immediately say that accounts which share data with others are way too sensitive and at least these should have 2fa enforced. If you don't want it, you don't share data. Probably the company does not have a good security culture and this was not done.
Your aunt who still insists she's part Cherokee is not as capable of understanding data security risks as the IT department of the multi-million dollar that offered the ludicrously stupid feature in the first place.
People use these sites once right? Who's changing their password on a site they don't log into anymore? Given that credential stuffing was inevitable and foreseeable, the feature is obviously a massive risk that shouldn't have been launched.