Mozilla site exposed encrypted passwords

A database of inactive Mozilla usernames and passwords was exposed on the Internet earlier this month, the Mozilla Foundation disclosed on Tuesday.

The database, which contained 44,000 inactive user accounts for the addons.mozilla.org site, was inadvertently placed on a public-facing Web server, wrote Chris Lyon, the Mozilla director of infrastructure security, in a blog posting.

Lyon stressed that the exposure "posed minimal risk to users." The organization erased all the passwords, which were encrypted. It also accounted for every download of the database.

Current users of addons.mozilla.org are not affected, because the organization upgraded its procedure for encrypting passwords in April 2009, Lyon stated.

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