Lastpass posts security advisory; hack detected but security not compromised

Lastpass has today notified users that its team discovered and blocked suspicious activity on its network on Friday last week. In their investigation, they have found no evidence that encrypted user vault data was taken, nor that LastPass user accounts were accessed. The investigation has shown, however, that LastPass account email addresses, password reminders, server per user salts, and authentication hashes were compromised.

What does this mean for users? Not too much to worry about really. Lastpass said:

We are confident that our encryption measures are sufficient to protect the vast majority of users. LastPass strengthens the authentication hash with a random salt and 100,000 rounds of server-side PBKDF2-SHA256, in addition to the rounds performed client-side. This additional strengthening makes it difficult to attack the stolen hashes with any significant speed.

Nonetheless, we are taking additional measures to ensure that your data remains secure. We are requiring that all users who are logging in from a new device or IP address first verify their account by email, unless you have multifactor authentication enabled. As an added precaution, we will also be prompting users to update their master password.

If you use an encrypted password manager such as Lastpass the most important security aspect is a secure master password. Without this, and factoring in their strong cryptographic security, your data is likely to remain fairly safe despite attempts such as this.