Popular backup service Dropbox went down late Friday — and a hacker group is claiming responsibility.A group called The 1775 Sec says via Twitter it compromised Dropbox’s site in honor of Internet activist and computer programmer Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide a year ago.
Dropbox is saying the outage, which appears to be resolved, arose from routine maintenance.
“We are aware of an issue currently affecting the Dropbox site,” a message on the company’s home page says. “We have identified the cause, which was the result of an issue that arose during routine internal maintenance, and are working to fix this as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
The breach, roughly around the same time Nieman Marcus said it was the victim of a credit-card hack, is “yet another proof point for why people are concerned about security and privacy now more than ever,” says Yorgen Edholm, CEO of computer-security firm Accellion.
“Businesses and individual users alike need software that protects our information above all else,” Edholm says. “Without a secure platform, what is the real value of any file sharing solution?”
In November, Dropbox CEO Drew Houston announced that the company had hit 200 million users.
