eHarmony: Some User Data Stolen, But Not Hacked

Posted 02/11/2011 at 9:33am | by Paul Lilly

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Online dating site eHarmony revealed that a hacker made off with some user info, including user names, email addresses, and hashed passwords, but said the site itself was not hacked. Even with the information obtained, eHarmony said it has a number of safeguards in place -- like state-of-the-art firewalls, load balancers, SSL, and other sophisticated security approaches -- that make it difficult for hackers to actually break into the site. It's a point eHarmony seemed intent to drive home.

"Some data was obtained without authorization from an ancillary informational site we operate, eHarmony Advice, which uses completely separate databases and Web servers than eHarmony.com," the dating site wrote in a blog post. "From one eHarmony Advice database, the hacker obtained a file that included user names, email addresses and hashed passwords. User names and passwords are needed to gain access to the message boards on the eHarmony Advice site."

eHarmony offered up the usual line about having taken the usual steps to fix the situation and noting that it notified potentially affected customers, which only works out to about 0.05 percent of its user base. Leisure Suit Larry, when reached for comment, said this is exactly the reason why he's a Lounge Lizard.