LastPass Hackers Breach Company's Password Vault. Is Your Data At Risk?

The password manager LastPass has announced new details about a hacking incident that occurred in August 2022.

At the time, LastPass said that although an "authorized party" gained entry to its system, no evidence was found that the hackers obtained user data. Now, evidence has emerged that the hackers appear to have gained access to an employee's home computer and infiltrated a "shared cloud-storage environment," which "initially made it difficult for investigators to differentiate between threat actor activity and ongoing legitimate activity."

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The hackers gained access to the employee's computer by installing a keylogger into the software to obtain the employee's password for the LastPass corporate vault. Once they were in the vault, they exported entries and shared folders that contained decryption keys needed to unlock cloud-based Amazon S3 buckets with customer vault backups.

LastPass announced key initiatives it is taking to address the "ongoing containment, eradication and recovery activities related to the second incident," including "hardening to security" of employees' resources and home networks.

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With so much of life requiring passwords for day-to-day functions — from email to apps — LastPass was founded to help individuals navigate all their passwords in one secure place.

Is your data at risk?

GoTo, LastPass' parent company, announced in January that it will inform individuals if their data has been breached and provide "actionable steps" to ensure greater security for their accounts.

Although it's still unclear how many users were affected by the hack, Kiplinger suggests it's better to be safe than sorry and take action immediately by changing important passwords, using websites like HaveIBeenPwned.com or even switching password managers.