On December 28, 2021, users of the password manager LastPass drew attention to the Hacker News platform that they had received emails from the service provider informing them of blocked login attempts with their master password in unusual locations. The emails did not have typical characteristics of phishing emails and appeared authentic. Suspicions were raised that LastPass had fallen victim to a data leak and passed on information to unauthorized third parties.

After a thorough review of the unusual activity, LastPass assured that no user data had been compromised, nor had the service provider been the victim of a malware attack or phishing campaign. Instead, bot activity was suspected of being behind the events.

Further investigations ultimately revealed that the sending of the emails was due to an error in the alarm system. A limited number of LastPass users had mistakenly received automated security alerts from the company that were triggered for no reason.

LastPass adjusted its security alert systems in response to the incident, assuring that by using the zero-knowledge security model , no master passwords of users would be stored on the company’s servers at any time.