Hackers quietly broke into eBay two months ago and stole a database full of user information, the online auction site revealed Wednesday. Criminals now have possession of eBay customer names, account passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and birth dates.

The company said the passwords were encrypted and are virtually impossible to be deciphered. Still, as a precaution, eBay is asking everyone to reset their passwords late Wednesday.

The company isn't saying how many of its 148 million active accounts were affected -- or even how many customers had information stored in that database. But an eBay spokeswoman said the hack impacted "a large number of accounts."

EBay's subsidiary, PayPal, said it was untouched by the data breach. PayPal data, which is sensitive because it includes payment information, is kept on a separate network.

To hack into the eBay database, the cyber attackers managed to get their hands on "a small number" of eBay employee log-in credentials, the company said. They then used that to worm their way into eBay's corporate network. The hackers grabbed the customer database between late February and early March.

It wasn't until two weeks ago that eBay discovered employee credentials had been stolen, the company said. The company then conducted a forensic investigation of its computers and found the extent of the theft.

The company said it hasn't spotted any increase in fraudulent activity on eBay yet.

The good news for eBay customers is that the passwords were encrypted with a technique known as hashing, which turns text into irreversible jumbled code. And they were "salted" with an added random digit or two. Also, eBay's password requirements are ranked slightly better than average by password manager Dashlane. That'll make them even harder to decrypt.

But that's not the point. The real danger here is in the fallout of such a major data breach. Hackers now know where you live. They can call you. Expect to receive fake deals and offers. Beware of getting duped into revealing even more sensitive information, like your bank details or Social Security number.

This is only the latest major data breach compromising people's digital lives. In April, AOL (AOL) announced hackers stole "a significant number" of its 120 million users' email addresses, passwords, contact lists and more.

About 100 percent of both firms' revenue growth in the last year is directly related to mobile.

    Apple is a phone company.  Yes, it makes other screens and products for other screens—iPads, iPods, Apple TV, iTunes. But now about 60 percent of its revenue comes from the iPhone, and all of its new revenue comes from selling phones, mostly to people overseas. The rest of the company is actually shrinking.

    Facebook is a phone company, too. Yes, it makes products for desktop. But about 60 percent of its ad revenue now comes from mobile, up from 30 percent just a year ago. Like Apple, it's an American tech company whose future is (literally) in the hands of foreigners. For Apple, every $1 of American growth in the last year corresponds with $8 of growth from overseas. For Facebook, every new daily active user in the U.S. and Canada is swamped by more than 12 new users overseas. And, like Apple, if you take out mobile, the company isn't growing at all.

    Mobile is the future, and the future looks like an oligopoly. Apple and Samsung (powered by Android) account for 96 percent of all smartphone shipments. Facebook and Google account for about 60 percent of global mobile ad spending right now and they're projected to account for for 70 percent of mobile ads in 2015.

    Google is still arguably the king of mobile. Its Android software powers the most phones and it sells the most mobile ads. But Facebook and Apple have something Google would really, really like to have. Apple has profits. Apple commands 87 percent of the profit in the smartphone industry. Facebook has growing mobile ad prices. While Google's cost-per-clicks have tumbled quarter after quarter, Facebook's price per ads actually doubled in the last year, growing by 118 percent, thanks to more ads appearing in your News Feed, which dominates the mobile experience.

    All of Facebook's growth is coming from mobile and international. All of Apple's growth is coming from mobile and international. Basically, smartphones are the future of tech right now, and no more than four companies account for basically the entire mobile device and ad business.

The Heartbleed Bug is a serious vulnerability in the popular OpenSSL cryptographic software library. This weakness allows stealing the information protected, under normal conditions, by the SSL/TLS encryption used to secure the Internet. SSL/TLS provides communication security and privacy over the Internet for applications such as web, email, instant messaging (IM) and some virtual private networks (VPNs).

The Heartbleed bug allows anyone on the Internet to read the memory of the systems protected by the vulnerable versions of the OpenSSL software. This compromises the secret keys used to identify the service providers and to encrypt the traffic, the names and passwords of the users and the actual content. This allows attackers to eavesdrop on communications, steal data directly from the services and users and to impersonate services and users.

What leaks in practice? We have tested some of our own services from attacker's perspective. We attacked ourselves from outside, without leaving a trace. Without using any privileged information or credentials we were able steal from ourselves the secret keys used for our X.509 certificates, user names and passwords, instant messages, emails and business critical documents and communication.

How to stop the leak? As long as the vulnerable version of OpenSSL is in use it can be abused. Fixed OpenSSL has been released and now it has to be deployed. Operating system vendors and distribution, appliance vendors, independent software vendors have to adopt the fix and notify their users. Service providers and users have to install the fix as it becomes available for the operating systems, networked appliances and software they use.

For more details, visit : HEARTBLEED.COM