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An Alert System for Security Breaches


From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 01:09:54 -0500 (CDT)

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/an-alert-system-for-security-breaches/

By NICOLE PERLROTH
The New York Times
September 19, 2012

It was, no doubt, the year of the security breach.

Hackers breached LinkedIn, LastFM.com, eHarmony, Yahoo and other sites, then posted customers’ usernames, passwords, e-mail addresses and device IDs to the Internet for all to see. In most cases, the consumers had to dig through hackers’ data dumps to find out what, if any, of their information had been compromised, then scurry to change their log-in credentials across many sites.

Now, with breaches on the rise, some companies have started offering customers new services to save them the trouble. LastPass, a service for managing passwords, said on Tuesday that it had partnered with PwnedList, a database of leaked usernames and passwords, to alert customers if a Web site was breached and if their information was included in the data dump.

The company will perform daily scans of PwnedList’s database of 24 million (and growing) publicly leaked usernames and passwords and alert customers by e-mail if a domain was breached, if their log-in information was compromised and if they used the same password for the breached Web site elsewhere. In a blog post, LastPass said it planned to offer its alert system, called LastPass Sentry, free.

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