Sleazy forum targets boudoir photographers in password cracking scheme

A number a boudoir photographers have had their security compromised by an adult forum, which has had its member cracking the passwords on accounts in order to share the contents for their own titillation.

As spotted by Brandsmasher, an adult forum had a 121 page long discussion thread, full of links to boudoir portfolios on the websites of professional photographers. While these were all password locked, most of them were broken into due to them having simple passwords that could be either guessed by a person, or else by using a common word or dictionary attack.

The forum, which specializes in sharing voyeur content, had thousands of images that were stolen using this method, primarily from SmugMug and Zenfolio accounts. And while the discussion thread itself has now been deleted, a record of it remains in the Google cache.

As distasteful as the whole event is, it really underscores the need for better password security among photographers (well, among everyone). In this case, it seems to have primarily been a breach of privacy, rather than the hackers aiming for identity theft or financial gain. But what's the bet that some of those photographers would use the same passwords for multiple different things?

So please, everyone, work on your password safety. Use unique passwords whenever possible. There are a great number of resources out there on how to create passwords that are difficult to crack, or alternatively, invest in an application like 1Password which can generate a unique password for each site you visit.

(via SLRLounge)