Un-Christian hackers steal passwords, emails from Christian singles site

Staff Writers
Friday, 27 February 2009 07:53

Your IT - Home IT

A Christian singles website, Singles.org, which claims 30,000 members, has apparently been hacked, with some 9000 passwords believed to have been stolen and emails compromised, according to security firm, Trend Micro.

Trend Micro Australia’s Internet content security specialist consumer segment manager, David Peterson, warns that “the hack is the tip of the iceberg,” and he says he believes details of those compromised email address holders are now already being used to access more financially oriented sites, such as banking or shopping sites like eBay, for example.

“The problem is that email addresses are commonly used as logins, and people tend to reuse the same logins and passwords for multiple other sites.  So, once a hacker gets hold of details via an easily accessed site such as this Singles.org one, it can lead to large credit card bills, strange or offensive emails, and private information being circulated globally.

"It’s a hard lesson learned for these 9000 or so people. The moral of the story is to use different passwords for each website, and consider separate email addresses for personal and business or purchasing activities. Password access alone is simply not enough to secure a website,” warns Peterson.