BrowserStack is back online after temporarily suspending service due to an attack.
The company stated it had been hacked after someone sent an email to customers claiming the company was shutting down and had failed to follow-through on promises related to security. Founded in 2011, BrowserStack is a cross-browser testing tool used to test websites and servers.
A copy of the email was posted to Pastebin.
“Not only do all of our administrators have access, but so does the general public,” the hacker claims in the email. “We have no firewalls in place, and our password policies are atrocious. All virtual machines launched are open to the public, accessible to anyone with the alpha password “nakula” on port 5901, a password which is stored in plaintext on every VM. As well, our infrastructure uses the same root passwords on all machines, which is also stored in plaintext on every VM launched (“c0stac0ff33″).”
“Given the propensity for cyber criminals to target infrastructure services such as ours, it is almost certain all of your data has been compromised,” the email states. “These passwords take no less than 15 minutes to find for anyone who is looking. We hope we have not caused you too much trouble, and to our enterprise customers who signed deals contracts based on a fabrication, we are equally sorry.”
It is not known whether any of the hacker’s claims in the email are true. According to BrowserStack, the hacker’s access was limited solely to a list of email addresses.
“All BrowserStack services are now up and running,” the company tweeted shortly after noon PST. “We are keeping a strong check and will email all users the entire analysis.”
The company said it will post a post-mortem of the attack.
BrowserStack serves some 25,000 customers and more than 520,000 registered developers across the world.
