14 DAY TRIAL // Hackers managed to gain unauthorized access to the computer systems of the MeetMe social network, affecting an undisclosed number of users.
The company discovered that the intrusion occurred between August 5 and 7, 2014, and that information on a number of accounts had been compromised.
The incident was reported on August 15, but it was made public at the beginning of the week, after taking the necessary measures for preventing such events from happening and after notifying users about the intrusion and the risks it involved.
According to the announcement from MeetMe, details such as user names, email addresses, and passwords have been exposed to individuals that have yet to be identified.
The leaked passwords were not available in plain text as they were stored in an encrypted form on the affected server.
“For a period of time, the hackers may have been able to access the affected MeetMe accounts, but there is no evidence that they did so and they can no longer do so,” said the company in the breach report.
Although passwords were stored securely, the company advised the affected users to change them in order to completely eliminate the threat of account hijacking. Also, if the countersign was used for logging into other services, updating them for those accounts is also recommended.
According to the financial information provided by the company for the second quarter of 2014, the revenue increased by 13% compared to the same period last year, reaching a total of $10.7 / €8.08 million.
The revenue from the mobile platform was up by 114%, compared to Q2 2013, being $5.6 / €4.228 million and representing more than half of the money flow recorded by the company.
As far as the mobile user base is concerned, MeetMe reported in July that they had broken the barrier of one million mobile active users on a daily basis.
“It took us seven years to reach 800,000 mobile daily active users. It took us another 19 months to reach 900,000 users, and then just six more weeks to reach one million users,” said MeetMe CEO Geoff Cook.
“We believe our exciting pipeline of new features will continue to make MeetMe the best app for finding new chat partners,” he added.
The company is clearly on an upward trend, which makes it a more appealing target for cyber attacks. This means that beefing up security must be a top priority these days.