Security Breach Hit 100 Million Quora Users

Security breach hits 100 million Quora users and it is announced by the Q & A site Quora.

Due to unauthorized access to system some of the data is compromised. The discovery was made by Quora on Friday, 30 November.

Quora has announced it on their blog that investigation is under process. The investigation is taking place rapidly to study the situation and to take appropriate steps to avoid such incident from reoccurring in future.

Quora has tried to stay as transparent as possible and has shared what has happened, what information was involved, what they are doing, and what the users can do.

We have discovered that some user data was compromised by unauthorized access to our systems. We’ve taken steps to ensure that the situation is contained and are notifying affected users. Protecting your information is our top priority. Read more here: https://t.co/uwbdMjoM1v
— Quora (@Quora) December 3, 2018

THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS SHARED BY Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo

What Information was Involved

Following information may have been compromised for the 100 million users:

Account information (name, email address, encrypted (hashed) password, data imported from linked networks when authorized by users
Public content and actions (questions, answers, comments, upvotes)
Non-public content and actions(answer requests, downvotes, direct messages (note that a low percentage of Quora users have sent or received such messages)

Questions and answers that were written anonymously are not affected by this breach as quora do not store the identities of people who post anonymous content.

The overwhelming majority of the content accessed was already public on Quora, but the compromise of account and other private information is serious.

What Quora is Doing

Quora is in the process of notifying the users whose data may have been compromised. Quora users who may have been affected, their accounts will be logged out.

Quora has also intimated that they have identified the root cause and are taking steps to address the issue. The investigation into the issue is still under process though.