content/news/2018-05-26-services-maintenance.md

   1 ---
   2 author: ilbelkyr
   3 date: 2018-05-26 17:12:00+00:00
   4 slug: services-maintenance-password-security
   5 title: Services maintenance and password security
   6 category: general
   7 category: freenode
   8 ---
   9 We recently took our services (NickServ and friends) offline for maintenance to
  10 ensure encrypted storage of the services database.
  11
  12 During this process, we accidentally started services with an empty database.
  13 While we quickly realized the mistake, a large number of users were already
  14 logged out before we stopped the process, receiving a message like "Account
  15 *youruser* dropped, forcing logout". Services were quickly restored to normal
  16 afterwards and people were able to log in to their accounts as before. We would
  17 like to apologize for the disruption and confusion this may have caused.
  18
  19 Unfortunately, some people have used this opportunity to spread some
  20 misinformation, claiming that "all passwords have been released". This is not
  21 the case; there has been no threat to account security due to this incident.
  22 Additionally, we do not store passwords in a recoverable form at all.
  23
  24 In any case, we do recommend using a unique and secure password not shared with
  25 other online services. If you wish to change your password, you may do so using
  26 the command `/msg NickServ SET PASSWORD <newpassword>` while logged in (replacing
  27 `<newpassword>` with the password you wish to set). You might wish to consider
  28 using a password manager as well, such as [KeePassXC](https://keepassxc.org/).
  29
  30 We do take security and privacy very seriously. Notifications about any actual
  31 security breaches would appear on this site, as well as in global notices sent
  32 out by members of staff (identified by a `freenode/staff/` cloak).
  33
  34 Apologies for the confusion and thank you for using freenode!