Kickstarter, a web site that serves as a funding platform for creative projects, said on Saturday that malicious hackers gained unauthorized access to its systems and accessed user data.

“On Wednesday night, law enforcement officials contacted Kickstarter and alerted us that hackers had sought and gained unauthorized access to some of our customers’ data,” Yancey Strickler, Kickstarter’s CEO, wrote in a security notice. “Upon learning this, we immediately closed the security breach and began strengthening security measures throughout the Kickstarter system.”

According to Strickler, customer information accessed by the attacker(s) included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords.

“Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one,” Strickler said.

The company said via Twitter that “old passwords used salted SHA1, digested multiple times. More recent passwords use bcrypt.”

Strickler said that no credit card data was accessed by the attackers, and that so far only two Kickstarter user accounts have seen evidence of unauthorized activity.

Kickstarter did not say how many user accounts were affected in the breach, but the company says that since launching in 2009, more than 5.6 million people have pledged $ 980 million, funding 56,000 creative projects through its platform.

“As a precaution, we strongly recommend that you create a new password for your Kickstarter account, and other accounts where you use this password,” the advisory suggested.

“We have since improved our security procedures and systems in numerous ways, and we will continue to do so in the weeks and months to come,” Strickler wrote. “We are working closely with law enforcement, and we are doing everything in our power to prevent this from happening again.”

*Updated with additional details on password encryption.

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Recent Phishing Attacks Compromised Employee Email, Social Media Accounts at Microsoft

Microsoft on Friday said that attackers breached the email accounts of a “select number” of employees, and obtained access to documents associated with law enforcement inquiries.

According to the company, a number of Microsoft employees were targeted with attacks aiming to compromise both email and social media accounts, and in some cases, the attacks were successful.

“While our investigation continues, we have learned that there was unauthorized access to certain employee email accounts, and information contained in those accounts could be disclosed,” Adrienne Hall, General Manager at Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing Group, wrote in a blog post. 

“It appears that documents associated with law enforcement inquiries were stolen,” Hall said.

“If we find that customer information related to those requests has been compromised, we will take appropriate action,” Hall continued. “Out of regard for the privacy of our employees and customers – as well as the sensitivity of law enforcement inquiries – we will not comment on the validity of any stolen emails or documents.”

The software giant did not say how many documents might have been obtained or exposed as a result of the attacks, or who they believe may have been behind the attacks.

Targeted attacks like this are not uncommon, especially for an organization like Microsoft. What’s interesting about this is that the incident was significant enough to disclose, indicating that a fair number of documents could have been exposed, or that the company fears some documents will make their way to the public if released by the attackers—which may be the case if this was a “hacktivist” attack.

“In terms of the cyberattack, we continue to further strengthen our security,” Hall continued. “This includes ongoing employee education and guidance activities, additional reviews of technologies in place to manage social media properties, and process improvements based on the findings of our internal investigation.”

In a Microsoft Law Enforcement Requests Report that covered the first half of 2013, Microsoft (including Skype) said that it received 37,196 requests from law enforcement agencies potentially impacting 66,539 accounts.  

Microsoft has recently faced a barrage of attacks claimed by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), hackers who support President Bashar al-Assad’s regime. While no attacks have resulted in any significant data loss or company-wide impact, the company did have social media accounts and blogs compromised this month.

It is unclear if the attacks may be related to the Syrian Electronic Army.

SecurityWeek has reached out to Microsoft for additional details and this story will be updated when a response is received.

Related: Yes, Virginia, There Really is Social Engineering

Related: Social Engineering is Alive and Well. How Vulnerable is Your Organization?

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