Re^2: What happened?

[afoken]

What really worries me is that the attackers claim that the passwords were stored UNENCRYPTED. We tell each and every wannabe-coder to salt and encyrpt passwords, and the perlmonks code doesn't? If that is true, the monastery has a really big problem, and just changing our passwords once or twice, as advised in It's Time for Everyone to Change Passwords!, is just trying to cure the symptoms.

Alexander

[jrsimmon]

Evidently they were stored plain text. Until someone updates the users that the breach has been closed and the passwords are actually being stored in a sane manner, you should expect that people who care to do so have full access to your profile.

[Juerd]

Yes, but still people should change their passwords *now*. And *again* when the problems have been fixed.

If your password is listed, anyone can use your password to change your posts, or worse: change your password so you can't change it yourself, later.

If you change it now, your new (temporary) password would still be stored in clear text, on a possibly insecure host (although apparently the passwords were stolen from a disused server), but getting it would require significant effort as opposed to just reading a magazine that has probably been copied over a million times already.

[Anonymous Monk]

users who havent logged into perlmonks in over a year should have their passwords changed by gods