The CEO of password-manager company LastPass said Thursday that it was recently hacked, but the company sees no evidence the incident exposed any customer data or passwords.
“We have determined that an unauthorized party gained access to portions of the LastPass development environment through a single compromised developer account and took portions of source code and some proprietary LastPass technical information,”
CEO Karim Toubba wrote in a letter to customers.
An investigation determined that an “unauthorized party” cracked into its developer environment, the software employees use to build and maintain LastPass’s product. The perpetrators were able to gain access through a single compromised developer’s account, the company said.
We recently detected unusual activity within portions of the LastPass development environment and have initiated an investigation and deployed containment measures. We have no evidence that this involved any access to customer data. More info: https://t.co/cV8atRsv6d pic.twitter.com/HtPLvK0uEC
— LastPass (@LastPass) August 25, 2022
LastPass, a password manager, is used by more than 33 million people worldwide to store their passwords for various accounts and websites in a “vault” that can be unlocked with a singular master password. The attack struck a company that generates and stores hard-to-crack, auto-generated passwords for multiple accounts, like Netflix or Gmail, for its users without manually entering credentials. LastPass lists Patagonia, Yelp Inc., and State Farm as customers on its website.
Toubba said the company became aware of the hack after observing unusual activity two weeks ago.
LastPass said its software is designed so that the company can never know or gain access to customers’ master passwords.
“Our investigation has shown no evidence of any unauthorized access to encrypted vault data,” the company wrote on a frequently asked questions page. “Our zero-knowledge model ensures that only the customer has access to decrypt vault data.”
The company said its products are operating normally, and LastPass is working with a cybersecurity and forensics firm following the incident.
“Based on what we have learned and implemented, we are evaluating further mitigation techniques to strengthen our environment,” Toubba told customers.
“It is unlikely that the stolen source code will give the criminals access to customer passwords,”
Allan Liska, an analyst on the Computer Security Incident Response Team at cybersecurity company Recorded Future
