100 Million Quora Users Have Info Exposed in Data Breach

Popular Q&A website Quora recently announced that over 100 million users had their information exposed as a result of hacking.

“We recently discovered that some user data was compromised as a result of unauthorized access to one of our systems by a malicious third party,” the company said on a blog.

“We are working rapidly to investigate the situation further and take the appropriate steps to prevent such incidents in the future.”

Exposed data includes names, email addresses, encrypted passwords, and content left by users (questions, answers, and responses).

Quora said it would alert any user who was affected. It will also log out all Quora users who were possibly affected and invalidating those passwords.

The website advised anyone worried about the breach should change their password information as soon as they can.

The company reported they’ve identified the cause and already solved the breach. They said they’re continuing to investigate what happened and “continue to make security improvements.”

“It is our responsibility to make sure things like this don’t happen, and we failed to meet that responsibility,” Chief Executive Adam D’Angelo wrote.

“We recognize that in order to maintain user trust, we need to work very hard to make sure this does not happen again. There’s little hope of sharing and growing the world’s knowledge if those doing so cannot feel safe and secure, and cannot trust that their information will remain private.”

Quora wasn’t the only major hack within the last week. Marriott hotels and resorts reported some 500 million users had information ranging from name, credit card data, and resort stays exposed for over four years.

Interesting Engineering will continue tracking this story and update it with any further information as soon as it becomes available.