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Thousands of Mega Logins Dumped Online, Exposing User Files (zdnet.com)
Thousands of credentials for accounts associated with New Zealand-based file storage service Mega have been published online, ZDNet reports. From the report: The text file contains over 15,500 usernames, passwords, and files names, indicating that each account had been improperly accessed and file names scraped. Patrick Wardle, chief research officer and co-founder at Digita Security, found the text file in June after it had been uploaded to malware analysis site VirusTotal some months earlier by a user purportedly in Vietnam. Wardle passed the data to ZDNet. We verified that the data belonged to Mega, the file-sharing site formerly owned by internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom by contacting several users, who confirmed that the email address, password, and some of the files we showed them were used on Mega.
You know how you guys are all oh no google botnet
don't use chrome
Who do you think owns virus total
and about 15,000 of those full of illegal stuff.
BugMeNot and Mailinator might be popping up a lot in that list.
Yeah, here's the password: 12345mega. You found the freely shared files. Oh noes!
nuff said
The way I remember Mega's demise is that their servers were confiscated semi-legally by the NZ authorities acting on behalf of the US authorities. Has a Mega backup found its way to the big wide world or have the authorities outed themselves as corrupt?
My guess is the second option.
Where did those servers (ok, their discs) end up?
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
I have a Mega login. Wouldn't mind knowing whether it's been exposed.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
I'll admit it's been a few years since I even used the Mega account I signed up for, but if IIRC, during the setup process there was a part where I had to download my key that would be used for encryption, with the UI notifying me in bold font that "WITHOUT THIS KEY YOU CANNOT DECRYPT YOUR FILES -- WE DO NOT HAVE ACCESS TO YOUR KEY AND CANNOT ACCESS YOUR FILES".
If this is so, what is the danger to an attacker getting access to Mega's servers?
Did 1) something change with the way Mega was run, or 2) The attackers were somehow grabbing these keys, or 3) I didn't understand how the encryption was working?
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
It appears to be a case of credential stuffing. Credentials stolen from other sites were run against Mega looking for hits. Since many people have multiple accounts at Mega full of stuff they don't care to protect it is not surprising they found so many hits. I switched to unique passwords on everything after someone got into my paid Spotify account--what an incredible nuisance that was--but until you get burned it's easy to be complacent, especially about a throwaway download account.
"Will future ages believe that such stupid bigotry ever existed!" -- Ivanhoe
Someone else will be able to access the copyrighted files you illegally distributed.
"found the text file in June after it had been uploaded to malware analysis site VirusTotal some months earlier by a user purportedly in Vietnam"
VirusTotal was the source of the leak? I didn't know you can view other people's actual file contents on VirusTotal.
If not, why was this part of the article necessary?
Finally! I forgot my password, and this is much easier than trying to recover it.
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