Email sent to Cerebus App users today (confirmed by Cerebus):
Hi [username],
Our Security Team recently discovered and blocked suspicious activity on Cerberus servers. The investigation found no evidence that your account was in any way accessed or compromised.
However, the attacker(s) were able to gain access to usernames and encrypted passwords for a subset of our users. No other personal data (emails, device information, etc.) has been accessed.
While the accessed passwords are encrypted, as an extra precaution we have immediately secured these accounts invalidating the current passwords.
Please create a new password by signing into your account at www.cerberusapp.com< and selecting the “Forgot password?” option, or go directly here: https://www.cerberusapp.
com/forgotpwd.php . Submit the form and you will receive an email with further instructions to set your new password. After you reset the password, you can verify that no unauthorized commands have been sent to your Android device. Open Cerberus on your device, log in and select the “View Cerberus log” option at the bottom of the app settings.
We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience of having to change your password, we take security of our users very seriously and are constantly working to improve it.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Cerberus Support atsup…@cerberusapp.com
The Cerberus Team.
AndroidPolice posted a statement from Cerebus with additional details:
Here are some more details on the incident:
– The database was not accessed, password are hashed and uniquely salted multiple times there, and we will migrate to bcrypt soon
– The attacker was able to access a legacy log file that contained usernames and SHA-1 hashes of passwords, that was generated by the app logins between March 1 and March 21
– We have then deleted the log file, stopped the legacy logging procedure, invalidated the passwords for the accounts present into the log and notified the users involved
– A total of 96564 accounts had their password reset and have been notified with the email communication above. These accounts have not been accessed in any way.
– A total of 3 accounts were accessed by the attackers, before we blocked their activity and reset the passwords. Those 3 users were notified before the others with a different email communication.
– As of March 26, none of the data obtained by the attacker was released publicly, that we know of.