The company said it now has set stricter password requirements, and connects to Have I Been Pwned, a breach notification database set up by security expert Troy Hunt, to warn users away from previously breached passwords. It’s not clear why attackers targeted AdGuard users, but the company’s response was swift and effective. Meshkov told TechCrunch in an email that the number of affected accounts was likely in the low hundreds. It’s not known how many accounts were affected. “As a precautionary measure, we have reset passwords to all AdGuard accounts,” said Andrey Meshkov, AdGuard’s co-founder and chief technology officer.ĪdGuard has about five million users worldwide, and is one of the most prominent ad-blockers available.Īlthough the company said that some accounts were improperly accessed, there wasn’t a direct breach of its systems. But, the effort was “not enough” when the attackers know the passwords, a blog post said. That’s when hackers take lists of stolen usernames and passwords and try them on other sites.ĪdGuard said that the hacking attempts were slowed thanks to rate limiting - preventing the attackers from trying too many passwords in one go.

The company said it “detected continuous attempts to login to AdGuard accounts from suspicious IP addresses which belong to various servers across the globe,” in what appeared to be a credential stuffing attack. Popular ad-blocker AdGuard has forcibly reset all of its users’ passwords after it detected hackers trying to break into accounts.

Adguard account