Online community site Boards.ie was suspended for several hours today after an attack by hackers who accessed members’ usernames, email addresses and passwords.
The hugely popular discussion forum was breached shortly after 11am this morning by a “source external to Ireland” according to Tom Murphy, the website’s co-founder.
He said the gardaí, the Data Protection Commissioner and an independent security consultancy had been informed about the incident, adding “like all large sites we are regularly the target for disruption and take continual actions to proactively protect your data”.
“If you use the same password on Boards as you do on other services, you should change it on those other services to be safe,” Mr Murphy advised members, saying it was unknown if the data accessed would be used for any malicious reasons.