ID: IRCNE2012081588
Date: 2012-08-21
According to "eweek", Advanced Micro Devices is the latest major company to be victimized by hackers, shutting down its blog site Aug. 19 after a group calling itself r00tbeer apparently defaced the site and stole a database containing information of AMD staff.
The attackers reportedly announced the hack on its Twitter account after putting their logo and a link to the Twitter account on the site.
The chip maker has since shut down the site, initially saying it was being taken offline for “routine maintenance,” then posting a message that said its blog site “is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for the inconvenience. This area will be back online as soon as possible.”
In a statement emailed to eWEEK, an AMD spokesperson said the blog site was attacked Aug. 19 and that the company immediately took the site offline and changed all passwords.
“We believe that the attackers posted less than 200 registered usernames and salted password hashes to a hacker Website,” the statement said. “AMD uses salted password hashes, which is an industry best practice for encryption and extremely difficult to crack. … AMD remains committed to data security and user privacy and has launched an investigation into this matter.”
According to reports, AMD uses the WordPress blogging tool as the foundation of its blog site, which includes postings on everything from the company’s consumer and enterprises chip technologies to its cloud efforts and corporate information. The r00tbeer attackers apparently stole a user database from the site that contained information of almost 190 internal accounts.
Sophos’ Ducklin said that in terms of its size, the AMD hack was relatively minor, but that any hack is a cause for concern.
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