Adobe Security Breach Could Affect As Many As 150 Million UsersChris Dougherty Brad Arkin, Chief Security Officer for Adobe, said We also believe the attackers removed from our systems certain information relating to 2.9 million Adobe customers, including customer names, encrypted credit or debit card numbers, expiration dates, and other information relating to customer orders. In a blog post this week by Brian Krebs, it was revealed that early estimates were far too low and the actual number of customer accounts affected by the breach may have been in the tens of millions. According to Krebs, he has viewed evidence that contained the user names and passwords for tens of millions of accounts apparently taken from Adobe. This past weekend AnonNews.org also posted a link on their website to a 3.8gb file called users.tar.gz that reportedly contained information for more than 150 million Adobe user accounts. AnonNews.org posted a link to a 3.8gb file called users.tar.gz In addition to changing user passwords, Adobe has arranged for one year of free credit monitoring for those customers who had their credit card data stolen in the incident. Oddly enough, Adobes offering of peace comes by way of the Experian credit monitoring system. Experian, one of the three major credit bureaus, is still recovering from a recent security incident that involved the company being tricked into selling consumer records to an identity theft ring. I recently received one of the letters that Adobe sent out to their customers. The letter confirmed the Adobe servers were attacked between September 11th and September 17th and went on to say that hackers had accessed customer names, payment card expiration dates, encrypted payment card numbers, and other information relating to customer orders. Brad Arkin, Chief Security Officer for Adobe, also said In addition, the third party used our systems to decrypt some card numbers. Adobe Notification Letter (Part 1) Chris Dougherty is a grey hat hacker and online security expert. Please visit his blog, www.VirtualThreat.com, for more excellent news and information about protecting yourself in cyberspace. 