INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
ZoneAlarm, the consumer brand of the security firm Check Point, has fallen victim to a data breach in which hackers were able to gain
unauthorized access to one of it web forums.Once inside the web forum, the hackers were able to obtain the names, email addresses, hashed
passwords and dates of birth of almost 4,500 of the company's customers.Although neither ZoneAlarm nor Checkpoint publicly announced the
breach, ZoneAlarm did sent out emails to subscribers who had been affected and urged them to change their forum account passwords
immediately, which read:"The website became inactive in order to fix the problem and will resume as soon as it is fixed
You will be requested to reset your password once joining the forum
ZoneAlarm is conducting a thorough investigation into the whereabouts of this incident and views this as a serious matter.”According to
The Hacker News, which first revealed that ZoneAlarm's web forum had been breached, the attackers exploited a known critical RCE
vulnerability in vBulletin's forum software to gain unauthorized access to the security firm's website.ZoneAlarm had not updated its
vBulletin software and its forum was still running version 5.4.4 at the time of the breach
Unfortunately, this version contains a zero-day vulnerability which hackers recently exploited to hack into Comodo's forum where they were
able to access the login information of 245,000 of its users.Security vulnerabilities in vBulletin's forum software were also exploited
earlier this year when the retro gaming website Emuparadise was breached by hackers who compromised the email addresses, usernames,
passwords and IP addresses of 1.2m user accounts.ZoneAlarm's breach is yet another reminder to companies that patching their software should
be a top priority unless they want to fall victim to a similar data breach.Via teiss
