XKCD which is owned and run by American author Randall Munroe has is reported to have become a victim of a data breach leaking passwords, usernames and IP addresses of more than 560,000 users.
High placed sources say that data access to hackers took place in July this year and the company discovered the breach in early August.
Ironically the webcomic online forum is also known to discuss things about technologies and science, including web security. And becoming a victim of cyber-attacks will sound strange to those reading this article.
As of now, the XKCD forum has been taken offline and ‘Have I been Pwned’ forum was the first source to leak the hack news to the world.
The data leak includes salted and hashed passwords, email addresses, usernames and IP addresses from where the users were accessing the website services.
All those users belonging to echochamber.me/xkcd are being urged to change their passwords on an immediate note.
MD5 encryption algorithm which converts a plain text password into distributed allotment of alpha-numeric characters was hacked to gain access to the rest of the data.
Note- Xkcd is an online comic forum which offers comic statements in subject matter related to love, romance, life, maths and science including computers. Founded in the year 2005, the forum helps writers in churning black comedy filled humor with the help of landscapes, graphs, charts, mathematical patterns, and some interesting language brocades.
