- Plex Hacked – Data breach exposes email, usernames, and encrypted passwords.
- Change your Password now.
The company claimed no credit card information had been compromised, but the hackers breached their systems and data, including usernames, email IDs, and encrypted passwords.
Plex is an American streaming media service and a client-server media player platform made by Plex, Inc. The Plex Media Server organizes video, audio, and photos from a user’s collections and online services and streams them to the players.
In the email, Plex said to it’s customer
“Yesterday, we discovered suspicious activity on one of our databases. We immediately began an investigation and it does appear that a third-party was able to access a limited subset of data that includes emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords. Even though all account passwords that could have been accessed were hashed and secured in accordance with best practices, out of an abundance of caution we are requiring all Plex accounts to have their password reset. Rest assured that credit card and other payment data are not stored on our servers at all and were not vulnerable in this incident.
What Plex doing
“We’ve already addressed the method that this third-party employed to gain access to the system, and we’re doing additional reviews to ensure that the security of all of our systems is further hardened to prevent future incursions. While the account passwords were secured in accordance with best practices, we’re requiring all Plex users to reset their password,” said in its blog.
What you can do
Long story short, we kindly request that you reset your Plex account password immediately. When doing so, there’s a checkbox to “Sign out connected devices after password change.” This will additionally sign out all of your devices (including any Plex Media Server you own) and require you to sign back in with your new password.
Lastly, we sincerely apologize to you for any inconvenience this situation may cause. We take pride in our security system and want to assure you that we are doing everything we can to swiftly remedy this incident and prevent future incidents from occurring. We are all too aware that third-parties will continue to attempt to infiltrate IT infrastructures around the world, and rest assured we at Plex will never be complacent in hardening our security and defenses.”
HaveIBeenPwnd founder Troy Hunt also noticed,
Aw crap, I’m pwned in a @plex data breach. Again. I can’t do anything to *not* be in a breach like this (short of not using the service), but a @1Password generated random password and 2FA enabled makes this a mere inconvenience rather than a genuine risk. pic.twitter.com/XetB3IGUh3
— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) August 24, 2022
How to Secure Your Plex Account?
- You should immediately take steps to secure your Plex account following these instructions provided by the company.
- If you have not yet enabled two-factor authentication, you should do so.
- On the Account page of Plex, you will find the option for two-factor authentication.
