Kickstarter founder Yancey Strickley has revealed that the site became victim to a hack, compromising two user accounts. No credit card information was compromised, but they recommend everyone change their passwords.
The hack occurred on Wednesday, and was tracked down by law enforcement. They promptly told Kickstarter, who were able to close the security breach immediately. Kickstarter then took the time to investigate the scope and severity of the hack before informing the public.
The hack lead to access to usernames, emails, addresses, and phone numbers. Hackers could have also accessed encrypted passwords, which is not the same as getting the actual password. With the right tools, however, you can get the real password from the encryption, especially if it isn’t very good.
Kickstarter has also recommended 1Password and LastPass to help with password security. Facebook users need not worry since their login path was not compromised. Similarly, the hack used had no way of accessing credit card information, even if you live outside the US.
This seems to be the 1st time Kickstarter has been successfully attacked in this way. Kickstarter was founded in 2009 as a crowdfunding platform, intended to help realize creative projects, such as video, music, comics, and of course, video games.
While Kickstarter has become a vital source of crowdfunding for indie video game projects, there is a bit of skepticism surrounding the organization and how they manage crowdfunds, especially in terms of accountability. The company recently received an F rating from the Better Business Bureau, its lowest rating, for failing to respond to as much as six complaints. We also recently covered a story regarding how a big number of projects have failed to deliver.
Lest we be misunderstood, Kickstarter has grown to be an essential part of the industry today, and if anything, we bring up these issues because we want them to handle these better and improve their reputation. We hope to report better news in that regard soon.
