Be careful using Robinhood; hackers could take away all your money
For stock exchange investors, services like Robinhood, an app that makes it easy to trade shares, have become a fundamental tool because of its ease of use and its lows, or even no commissions. However, web application security experts believe that using these services can lead to serious security issues and, in the worst case, huge economic losses.
Robinhood, the popular stock buying and selling
app, has just notified its users of a service failure that caused improper
storage of login data. These logs were stored in plain text, so they do not
have any encryption for their protection. The developers of Robinhood did not
mention the total number of affected users.
“A few days ago we discovered that some
logins had been stored on our systems in a simple format; it is necessary to
inform you that your password could have been compromised”, mentions the
mail sent to users by the company.
After several web application security
specialists learned of the incident, a Robinhood spokesperson stated for
various media: “This is not a data breach or cyberattack incident against
our systems; I would also like to point out that this incident does not affect
all of our customers,” he said.
Encryption protects sensitive data held by
companies in the event of hacking. If this were to happen, a hacker would find
information composed of random characters instead of simply finding readable usernames
and passwords. Companies like Google have also suffered technical errors that
result in inadequate login data storage. The best option in cases like this is
for users to reset their passwords, as well as ignoring potential phishing
messages that try to take advantage of the confusion.
According to web application security
specialists from the International Institute of Cyber Security (IICS), the app
reported a considerable increase in its number of users, going from 4 to 6
million in a span of less than a year.
Robinhood is owned by a group of U.S. investors
and provides services such as stock movements and cryptocurrency
investments without commission. According to local media reports, the company
has presented to the U.S. Treasury Department its intentions to become a formal
banking institution, even it has already hired important officials from other
banks to make the project more robust.
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