Slack Technologies is the latest company to fall victim to hackers, exposing the private information of up to 500,000 users, such as email addresses, telephone numbers, Skype IDs and any other information that its users might have entered.
The Slack chat service has been gaining recognition over recent months and is currently valued at $2.8 billion. But the hack could impact this value as more and more of its users discover that their private information has now become reading material for hackers.
"We were recently capable to confirm that there was unauthorized access to a Slack database storing user profile information and facts," Slack Technologies said in a recent press release. "We have considering the fact that blocked this unauthorized access and produced extra adjustments to our technical infrastructure to avoid future incidents. We have also released two-issue authentication and we strongly encourage all users to allow this security feature."
The actual hack occurred over four days in February of this year but shockingly the company didn't notify its users until this past Friday in a blog post. As part of this notification, the company also notified particular customers whose data may have been compromised.
In the wake of the hack, the company has implemented new safety features to safeguard their system and prevent future attacks. However, the fact that they waited so long to notify their users of the hack allowing hackers access to the information without their knowledge for so long is disturbing at best.
"It appears that Slack has not been able to determine what user information was stolen but has stated that hackers obtained access to user names, email address, passwords, Skype IDs and phone numbers. Now Slack users are left wondering if their personal information was stolen and how they might be affected" CEO of iBoss, a cybersecurity provider, Paul Martini says. "This further highlights the need for all organizations -- both startups and established companies -- to invest in post-infection software that can quickly identify security breaches and prevent valuable data theft."
According to the company, they were already in the process of implementing a more secure, two-aspect authentication in the weeks leading up to the hack. However, in light of the attacks on their servers, the company decided on an early launch of the new system. In addition, teams have been working around the clock to rebuild the system to ensure its users are protected in the future.
"We are collaborating with outside experts to cross-check assumptions and ensure that we are meticulous in our method," Slack's spokesperson says. "In addition we have notified law enforcement of this illegal intrusion."
This is not the first time the company has come under scrutiny for its security practices. In October 2014, the company made headlines for leaving hat space names open for anyone to read. The flaw left secret departments from companies such as Apple, Google and Facebook exposed. While the company originally claimed it was a bug in the system, it later clarified its policy to make sure that it would not face any concern from the policy in the future.
