on Friday, Roku confirmed that about 576,000 accounts were affected by the cyber attack. This is the second cyber attack to hit the company, which compromised a small number of accounts earlier this year.
What’s happening in Roku?
Rocco says it detected an “unusual increase in account activity” earlier this year. After investigating, the company found that bad actors had compromised about 15,000 Roku accounts.
However, this was not due to a security breach in Roku’s systems. Instead, these bad actors obtained the usernames and passwords for these accounts through third parties, possibly through sources that leak stolen credentials online. They didn’t necessarily know that these usernames and passwords were for Roku accounts. Rather, they engage in what’s called “credential stuffing,” an automated process where they try to log into a variety of popular accounts with stolen credentials until they hit on a winning combination. As it happens, they land on the initial 15,000 accounts, before moving on to big wins.
Rocco says it continued to investigate after the incident, and discovered another 576,000 compromised accounts in the process. Roku still thinks the credentials for these accounts were taken from somewhere else, and even suggests they may have been taken from accounts where users had the same username and password. (Don’t reuse your passwords, folks.) Thus, the company has no security issues at this time.
What to do if your Roku account is infected
Since Roku has over 80 million active accounts, the chances of you being in the one percent of affected users are slim. Still, Roku says it has reset the passwords of all users affected by the attack. If bad actors have paid using your account, Roku has refunded you. The company says no financial information was compromised in the attack, so you can put your credit cards on hold now. It also affected a small number of users (less than 400 cases).
The company also enabled two-factor authentication (2FA) for all affected accounts. This is a good thing: 2FA requires access to a trusted device or phone number to log in after entering your password. Even if your credentials are leaked online, bad actors won’t be able to log into your account without access to your smartphone, significantly reducing the chances of a breach. If you don’t yet have 2FA set up on your Roku account (or an account that offers it, for that matter), Be sure to do this ASAP.
It’s fortunate that the attacks didn’t affect more users, but the incident highlights how important it is to stay on top of your digital security. Simple steps like using strong and unique passwords for all accounts, and setting up 2FA whenever possible, can prevent your accounts from being compromised.
Credit : lifehacker.com
