eBay asks 145 million users to change their passwords following cyber attack

Earlier this week, it was confirmed that popular online marketplace eBay was hit by a cyber attack and personal information for a substantial amount of users was stolen.

Yesterday, the company urged 145 million users to change their passwords, and to change those passwords on other sites if they use the same username and password elsewhere.

The company acknowledged that emails, encrypted passwords, birth dates and full mailing addresses were stolen during the attack from late March. Financial information and PayPal details were not compromised.

EBay spokeswoman Amanda Miller said the company uses “sophisticated,” proprietary hashing and salting for passwords, but security analysts believe it is just a matter of time before they are unscrambled.

The company added that there had not been any increase in fraudulent activity on the site since the breach. Attackers managed to obtain logins for some eBay employees, giving them access to the corporate network and eventually to exploit databases.