Dropbox blames employee account breach for spam attack
Dropbox said Tuesday one of its employee's accounts was compromised, leading to a raft of spam last month that irritated users of the cloud-storage service.
A stolen password was used to access the employee's account, which contained "a project document with user email addresses," Dropbox engineer Aditya Agarwal wrote on the company's blog.
"We believe this improper access is what led to the spam," Agarwal wrote. "We're sorry about this, and have put additional controls in place to help make sure it doesn't happen again."
The company also found that usernames and passwords that had been stolen from other websites were used to access "a small number of Dropbox accounts," Agarwal wrote. Hackers commonly try username and password combinations from breaches on other web services in hopes people use the same combination, a common security problem. Read more...
Dropbox doubles down on storage
If you have a paid Dropbox account, you just received an unexpected bonus: twice as much storage at no extra cost.
Cloud storage provider Dropbox last night doubled the amount of storage that Pro subscribers receive, increasing its Pro 50GB and 100GB packages to 100GB and 200GB, respectively. The larger storage allowances have already taken effect.
The official Dropbox announcement makes it sound like the cloud storage company doubled its paid allotments as a customer service: "We've heard from architects with giant drafting files and photographers with huge portfolios, but mostly we hear from families who have more than 100GB of photos, docs and videos." Read more...
Dropbox introduces support for Korean as the Samsung Galaxy S III launch edges closer
Dropbox is saying ’An Nyoung’ to South Korea after the company revealed that it is making the popular file sharing service available in Korean.
The Web-based portal and “selected” Android apps will be localized first, before apps for the Mac, PC and iOS follow suit, although no time frame for the additions has been disclosed.
The move to offer a localized service for Korea builds on Dropbox’s partnership with Samsung, and comes ahead of the launch of the Korean firm’s Galaxy S III smartphone, which has Dropbox storage integrated into it. Read more...
Dropbox, SkyDrive or Google Drive?
Microsoft unleashed a desktop sync app for SkyDrive. Today, Google followed by finally launching Google Drive — after a series of early appearances hinted that it was going to be arriving very, very soon. So now that the dust has settled, how do the two new services stack up with the current king of cloud storage and sync, Dropbox? Let’s take a look.
Free Storage
In terms of disk space in the cloud, SkyDrive offers you the most bang for your non-buck. While there are other ways to bump up your Dropbox storage without paying, all new SkyDrive users get the full 7GB from the get-go. Better still, if you’re an existing SkyDrive user and you install the new app you’ll get a whopping 25GB at no charge. Read more...
Dropbox Sharing Gets Ridiculously Easy With Links
In the words of Dropbox CEO Drew Houston, sharing documents and other files online is “bafflingly, still really difficult.” I mean, clearly it’s doable through email and, yes, services such as Dropbox, but it’s still kind of a pain. With a new feature launching today, Houston and his team are trying to make things as absolutely simple as possible. And it looks like they’ve succeeded.
Houston and Product Manager Ivan Kirigin demonstrated the feature to TechCrunch Editor Eric Eldon and me last week. It was one of those demos that went flew by — in a good way. Read more...
Dropbox implements major redesign
In Dropbox‘s own words, the redesign just implemented for their web interface has been “turned up to 11.” If you visit the site today you will be in for a surprise as a major overhaul of the interface has taken place.
The purpose of the redesign is to simplify the interface and put more focus on the actual content in your Dropbox. This has mainly been achieved with the introduction of a new multi-tool toolbar at the top of the page that auto-adjusts its options based on what you are currently doing. It has been coupled with a new right click menu with common options mirrored from the toolbar. Read more...
Dropbox optimizes app for Android 4.0
Cloud storage company Dropbox has added offline storage and bulk upload to an redesigned version of its Android application, which has been optimized for Android 4.0.
The favorites feature in version 2.0 allows users to make files available offline by clicking on a star in the menu, while the bulk upload means users no longer need to upload files one at a time. Instead they can select multiple photos and videos and upload them in the background, Dropbox said in a blog post on Thursday.
The bulk upload feature is already available in the iOS version, and is something users have been asking for on Android Market. Read more...
Dropbox cloud was a haven for data thieves, researchers say
Files entrusted to cloud-storage provider Dropbox were susceptible to unauthorized access via three attacks devised by security researchers, but the provider has since closed the vulnerabilities.
Dropbox could also be used as a place to store documents clandestinely and retrieve them from any Dropbox account controlled by an attacker.
Researchers who presented their work at Usenix Security Symposium say they had developed the exploits last year but gave Dropbox time to fix the problems before making the exploits public. Read more...