Adobe today announced that hackers have managed to obtain information on approximately 2.9 million of its customers that have downloaded its software, including customer IDs, encrypted passwords, customer names, encrypted credit/debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information on customer orders.

adobe_creative_cloud_feature
Adobe does not believe that the attackers were able to obtain decrypted credit or debit card numbers from its system, and is currently working with external partners and law enforcement to address the issue.

As a precautionary measure, Adobe is contacting users with affected accounts, initiating password resets. The company is also offering customers that had their credit or debit card information accessed the option of enrolling in a one-year complimentary credit monitoring service.

As a precaution, we are resetting relevant customer passwords to help prevent unauthorized access to Adobe ID accounts. If your user ID and password were involved, you will receive an email notification from us with information on how to change your password. We also recommend that you change your passwords on any website where you may have used the same user ID and password.

We are in the process of notifying customers whose credit or debit card information we believe to be involved in the incident. If your information was involved, you will receive a notification letter from us with additional information on steps you can take to help protect yourself against potential misuse of personal information about you. Adobe is also offering customers, whose credit or debit card information was involved, the option of enrolling in a one-year complimentary credit monitoring membership where available.

We have notified the banks processing customer payments for Adobe, so that they can work with the payment card companies and card-issuing banks to help protect customers’ accounts.

We have contacted federal law enforcement and are assisting in their investigation.

In addition to customer accounts, the hackers also accessed the source code of a number of Adobe products, but Adobe says that it is unaware of any increased risk to customers as a result of that particular attack.

Top Rated Comments

nagromme Avatar
151 months ago
Hmmm.... I wonder if there's a business model where we can get paid again and again forever whether we fix bugs or not, and EVEN if our updates are not very useful ones. One where we're under NO pressure to make our software great, because it won't affect our income. One where we can be paid for apps we let stagnate, alongside the ones we still work on. One where our customers' own creative work is held to monthly ransom, ready for us to lock them out at any time. One where we load their machines with layers of buggy crapware and updaters. And one where we keep ALL our users' credit card numbers on file forever!

�� I think I have an idea!
Score: 21 Votes (Like | Disagree)
thejadedmonkey Avatar
151 months ago
Maybe the hackers can release a version of Adobe Acrobat that isn't full of security holes :rolleyes:
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
brianbobcat Avatar
151 months ago
Yet another good reason I'm not on the cloud. Adobe: "Hey, hackers may have gotten your credit card, and we're not gonna give you any free months of CC. Keep an eye on your own credit card." Greedy bastards!
Score: 13 Votes (Like | Disagree)
mrxak Avatar
151 months ago
Silly question but. If hackers got Adobe ID's and passwords whats to keep them from changing the password ?
They got encrypted passwords, which are useless without decryption.
Specifically, the passwords are stored in a hash. What happens is you select your password and Adobe takes that password, does some math to it, then stores the resulting hash in their database somewhere, rather than storing your actual password. Then, when you enter your password to log in, it does the same math on it, and compares the result to the hash they have stored in the database. If the two hashes are the same, it knows you entered your password and it lets you in. If somebody gets the hash straight off their database, as would seem to be the case here, that doesn't help an attacker know what password to type in when they want to log in with your account, unless they can reverse engineer the hash algorithm. So, it really depends on what kind of hash algorithm they used for their database, as to how secure your password actually is.

Generally, it's a good idea to have everyone change their password anyway, just in case the algorithm eventually proves to be vulnerable to attack, or an attacker is properly motivated and willing to spend enough time to crack your password. Some hashes still in use today are considered vulnerable, though, so attackers may very well already be crunching through the hashes and getting plaintext passwords. One can hope Adobe is using a more secure hash, but plenty of big companies have used insecure algorithms in the past.

Hashes are designed not to be reversible, unlike regular encryption designed for actual decrypting at some point, but if the algorithm is known it's possible to simply use it to hash a bunch of password guesses, and then compare those guesses to the hashed passwords. Just search through the database for hashes you've made yourself, and you know the password for each of the accounts with the same password hash. It's essentially a dictionary attack, but it bypasses whatever system Adobe uses to prevent unlimited repeated invalid password entries (like locking your account after a certain number of attempts, or adding delays to the algorithm/webpage so it would take a prohibitively long time to try every possible password).

One method of preventing lookup table attacks like the above is to add a "salt" to the password before it's hashed so the result in the database isn't something the attacker can generate for a table without knowing the salt. Any old salt won't do, though. It needs to be a cryptographically-secure pseudo-random number, unique to each account, never reused when a user changes their password, and long enough that an attacker can't simply make as many tables as there are possible salts. Bear in the mind, the salt still has to be stored alongside the hash in order to authenticate a user, so an attacker knows the salt to use. But, by using a nice long pseudorandom salt for every individual password, each individual password needs a separate lookup table to brute force. Dictionary attacks are still possible if the hash algorithm and salt method is known, but take incredibly long amounts of time to crack the whole database and incredibly large amounts of storage. Against a single specific user, their password may be discovered, but only that one user, and only if they used a guessable password, and each single specific user will require a separate attack. In other words, they're still doing an ordinary dictionary attack, and the usual rules about making your passwords resistant to dictionary attacks apply. Properly salted passwords hashed with a modern secure algorithm are simply not feasible to extract from a database like this, en masse, but it's still a good idea for everyone to change their passwords. It's also a good idea to change any other passwords you have if you've made the common error of reusing passwords on multiple sites.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dumastudetto Avatar
151 months ago
Maybe the hackers can release a version of Adobe Acrobat that isn't full of security holes :rolleyes:

Hackers are good but they aren't miracle workers.
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)
kylepro88 Avatar
151 months ago
Here come the "This is why subscription service sucks" posts...

Either way, bummer. :/
Score: 8 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iPhone 17 Pro Blue Feature Tighter Crop

iPhone 17 Pro Launching Later This Year With These 13 New Features

Wednesday April 23, 2025 8:31 am PDT by
While the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max are not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the devices. Below, we recap key changes rumored for the iPhone 17 Pro models as of April 2025: Aluminum frame: iPhone 17 Pro models are rumored to have an aluminum frame, whereas the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models have a titanium frame, and the iPhone ...
iphone 17 dummies sonny dickson

iPhone 17 Air Almost as Thin as Its Buttons, New Images Show

Thursday April 24, 2025 2:14 am PDT by
If you missed the video showing dummy models of Apple's all-new super thin iPhone 17 Air that's expected later this year, Sonny Dickson this morning shared some further images of the device in close alignment with the other dummy models in the iPhone 17 lineup, indicating just how thin it is likely to be in comparison. The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be around 5.5mm thick – with a thicker ...
iPhone 17 Air Pastel Feature

iPhone 17 Air Launching Later This Year With These 16 New Features

Thursday April 24, 2025 8:24 am PDT by
While the so-called "iPhone 17 Air" is not expected to launch until September, there are already plenty of rumors about the ultra-thin device. Overall, the iPhone 17 Air sounds like a mixed bag. While the device is expected to have an impressively thin and light design, rumors indicate it will have some compromises compared to iPhone 17 Pro models, including only a single rear camera, a...
AirPods Pro 3 Mock Feature

AirPods Pro 3 Just Months Away – Here's What We Know

Friday April 18, 2025 5:16 am PDT by
Despite being more than two years old, Apple's AirPods Pro 2 still dominate the premium wireless‑earbud space, thanks to a potent mix of top‑tier audio, class‑leading noise cancellation, and Apple's habit of delivering major new features through software updates. With AirPods Pro 3 widely expected to arrive in 2025, prospective buyers now face a familiar dilemma: snap up the proven...
iphone 17 air dummy unbox therapy

iPhone 17 Air's Extreme Thinness Demoed in New Video

Tuesday April 22, 2025 10:22 am PDT by
Apple plans to release an all-new super thin iPhone this year, debuting it alongside the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max. We've seen pictures of dummy models, cases, and renders with the design, but Lewis Hilsenteger of Unbox Therapy today showed off newer dummy models that give us a better idea of just how thin the "iPhone 17 Air" will be. The iPhone 17 Air is expected to be ...
Global Close Your Rings Day Pin

Apple Stores Giving Away a Limited-Edition Pin For Free Today

Thursday April 24, 2025 10:15 am PDT by
Starting today, April 24, Apple Stores around the world are giving away a special pin for free to customers who request one, while supplies last. Photo Credit: Filip Chudzinski The enamel pin's design is inspired by the Global Close Your Rings Day award in the Activity app, which Apple Watch users can receive by closing all three Activity rings today. The limited-edition pin is the physical...
Apple Logo Spotlight Blue

White House Hits Back at Apple's Massive EU Fine

Thursday April 24, 2025 5:57 am PDT by
Apple's $570 million fine from the EU has triggered a sharp rebuke from the White House, which called the fine a form of economic extortion, Reuters reports. The fine was announced on Wednesday by the European Commission, following a formal investigation into Apple's compliance with the bloc's Digital Markets Act (DMA), a landmark piece of legislation aimed at curbing the market dominance of ...
ipad air magic keyboard feature

iPadOS 19 Rumored to Show Mac-Like Menu Bar When Connected to Magic Keyboard

Thursday April 24, 2025 12:09 pm PDT by
When an iPad running iPadOS 19 is connected to a Magic Keyboard, a macOS-like menu bar will appear on the screen, according to the leaker Majin Bu. This change would further blur the lines between the iPad and the Mac. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman previously claimed that iPadOS 19 will be "more like macOS," with unspecified improvements to productivity, multitasking, and app window management,...