Statement On one of the affected forums
I'm a member of CBRXX.com which is a VerticalScope Forum and the following was posted there by "Admin" last night
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Hey Team,
Over the 2 weeks we will be implementing some changes to our forum password strength and password expiration policies. To make sure you continue having the best experience possible on the community, we regularly monitor the site and the Internet to keep everyone's account information safe. We've recently become aware of a potential risk to some accounts coming from outside of this community. Just to be safe, we are implementing the following changes to improve security even further:
1) We are asking everyone to change their passwords (and will force a onetime reset). Along with every user on the forum, new passwords will need to be more complex, and can't be simple words (sorry, you can't have "fluffy" as your password anymore!). Please use a password unique to this community. Reusing passwords can expose your account indirectly when other websites (Twitter, Linkedin, Badoo, etc) are compromised; and
2) Your passwords will expire on a 180 day basis. When you login on the 181st day, you will have to change it. You guys and girls all have the highest level of access in our communities and this will help protect your accounts.
All other users on the community will have 365 day expirations. We'll also be sending out an email to users to let them know about the changes, in upcoming weeks.
We are testing and rolling out the changes slowly to ensure that they do not cause unforeseen issues with current plug-ins and products on the site, we will let you all know the day before it goes live.
I also ask that you help us with ensuring all users are being heard and we are answering everyone’s questions. We will be posting an announcement up to the community shortly and want to keep all chatter about this issue and any potential security issues in one place. If you see a user talking about this topic in a section outside of the announcement, please either move the post, or remove it and direct the user to the original thread. We greatly appreciate your help in this. If you have any questions please post them below.
Thanks all,
Helena Barclay
Community Management
http://www.cbrxx.com/site-help-suggestions-comments/29182-attention-security-issue.html