Tech

Stack Overflow says hackers breached production systems

Stack Overflow said it detected a security breach over the weekend.

Written by Catalin Cimpanu, Contributor May 16, 2019 at 3:22 p.m. PT

techrepublic cheat sheet

How to become a developer: Salaries, skills, and the best languages to learn

Stack Overflow, the internet's largest Q&A site for programming and development-related topics, has disclosed a security breach earlier today.

In a short message posted on its website, the company said that hackers gained access to its internal network.

"Over the weekend, there was an attack on Stack Overflow," said Mary Ferguson, VP of Engineering at Stack Overflow.

"We have confirmed that some level of production access was gained on May 11. We discovered and investigated the extent of the access and are addressing all known vulnerabilities."

Ferguson said the investigation did not unearth any evidence that hackers accessed user data; however, the company is not rulling out such an event.

Ferguson promised more details after the company concludes its investigation, currently ongoing

Stack Overflow was founded in 2008 and has a userbase of more than 10 million registered users. The site's yearly developer survey is considered one of the accurate reports on the state of modern programming ecosystem, from programming languages to salaries, and from developer tools to workplace conditions.

Fellow Q&A site Quora announced a security incident last December, admitting that hackers gained access to the account info, passwords, emails, private messages, and votes of over 100 million users.

ZDNet has reached out for comment to Stack Overflow. The company has not yet responded.