Opera Hack May Lead to Compromising 1.7m Users

On Friday, August 26th, Opera quickly reported that their password storing service Opera Sync was hacked. In wake of the Opera hack, the company has advised severe caution and asked its 1.7 million Opera Sync to change their account password, as well as other stored third-party accounts passwords.

The Opera Sync service manages individual encryption for each of their user accounts. However, as soon as the company made sure that the breach had been entirely contained, it chose the path of corporate transparency.

After the Opera hack, the company immediately admitted to having a flaw in its security and urged all its users to change their passwords. The hackers who managed to go through Opera’s security and encryption layers, broke into Opera Sync and only managed to access some information from just a few random accounts.

However, due to the high level of security and encryption that Opera has, the company cannot identify the accounts directly involved, as well as what exact information was obtained.

The Opera Hack Shows The Company’s True Character

The level of transparency that Opera chose to go with is admirable to say the least. By default, most internet users expect to find out about leaks from the hackers themselves and not the company.

Nevertheless, Opera is a company which prides itself with the high level of user security it offers. Opera Sync was a service that promised to offer full protection to user passwords and ensured that nobody could get to them. That service was hacked, making all of Opera’s promises of security null and void to some users.

The company admitted their fault and promised they were reinforcing their service. Opera’s history shows that they will.

The only bothersome issue with the entire affair is that although the hackers only managed to get some information from some Opera Sync accounts, the safest action to take for all of its 1.7 million users is to change their account password along with all of their passwords. Users who employ services such as Opera Sync usually need to manage dozens of passwords with some power users going past one hundred in their line of work.

Are you a victim of the Opera Hack? How do you feel about Opera Sync knowing it had security vulnerabilities? Let us know in the comments below.

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