IEEE (The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engingeers), the world’s largest technical professional association, recently announced that more than 100,000 usernames and passwords had been exposed in a data breach. The data breach was revealed on Slashdot, and according to the user who posted about the breach the information, kept in plaintext, was publicly available on their FTP servers for a month before being reported.
Due to the wide range of professionals who are a part of IEEE the incident is a significant one. Users include IBM, Google and Oracle employees, as well as researchers from NASA and Stanford. Government employees, defense contractors and others in critical positions are among those whose information was compromised.
If you’re a member of IEEE who’s information was compromised, you will have received notification to change your password.
It’s another reminder to use a separate password for each site visited, and at a bare minimum use different personal and professional account information, including usernames and passwords.
