What really worries me is that the attackers claim that the passwords were stored UNENCRYPTED. We tell each and every wannabe-coder to salt and encyrpt passwords, and the perlmonks code doesn't? If that is true, the monastery has a really big problem, and just changing our passwords once or twice, as advised in It's Time for Everyone to Change Passwords!, is just trying to cure the symptoms.

Alexander

Evidently they were stored plain text. Until someone updates the users that the breach has been closed and the passwords are actually being stored in a sane manner, you should expect that people who care to do so have full access to your profile.

Yes, but still people should change their passwords *now*. And *again* when the problems have been fixed.

If your password is listed, anyone can use your password to change your posts, or worse: change your password so you can't change it yourself, later.

If you change it now, your new (temporary) password would still be stored in clear text, on a possibly insecure host (although apparently the passwords were stolen from a disused server), but getting it would require significant effort as opposed to just reading a magazine that has probably been copied over a million times already.

No, only 3000+ xp were selected for exposure