“Cover It Live is used by thousands of journalists, bloggers, agencies and large media organizations to engage millions of Readers each month.”
That is the description of their services from their home page and now those thousands of people may have other information at risk.
In an email to users Friday evening Cover It Live notified them that starting on 07 January 2012 certain data files for their system were accessed by unauthorized individuals.
We have not yet determined if, or to what extent, CoveritLive account information (i.e., user names, email addresses and/or passwords) was accessed. We do know, however, that no financial account information has been compromised.
As they continue their investigation a decision has been made to trigger a system wide password reset for all active accounts which will begin January 14 at midnight tonight (EST) and 5 AM GMT.
Your password and all account passwords are encrypted as a standard CoveritLive information security practice, and we have no evidence that an unauthorized individual has actually retrieved, or is using such data. However, out of an abundance of caution we recommend that if you registered for CoveritLive using an email address and password combination that you use for other online accounts, you should immediately create unique passwords or new login credentials for those other sites and accounts
Most impressive in this situation is their coming out with the info of the breach within 6 days of it occurring instead of waiting while they continue their investigation. They close the email with some security practices that are good to use at anytime not just when there may have been a breach.
Do not open emails from senders you do not know. Be especially cautious of "phishing" emails, where the sender tries to trick the recipient into disclosing confidential or personal information.
Do not share personal or sensitive information via email. Legitimate companies will not attempt to collect personal information outside of a secure website.
You will get prompted to change your Cover It Live password the next time you log into the system once the reset begins.
