(Updated) Bricklink is currently down due to a suspected hacking/cybersecurity incident

November 4, 2023 | 17

Update: As of 1:20pm EST, Bricklink is now back online! Read about what happened here!

If you’ve been having issues accessing Bricklink, it’s not just you. The popular LEGO Marketplace (and lifeblood of the community) has been down for close to 5 hours now at time of publishing, an unusually long time for Maintenance.

Bricklink regularly goes down for maintenance every day, but only for a few minutes, and according to the error message, “Bricklink are currently investigating some unusual activity, so it’s too early to speculate further. We will share more information once it’s available.”

Latest Bricklink Hack Updates:

Update November 7th. 5.55 pm EST

Our investigations so far suggest that a very small number of accounts have or may potentially have been accessed by unauthorized individuals with data obtained outside our platform. We’ll be in contact with these members directly with more details on how to reopen their accounts.

We’re getting ready to reopen BrickLink soon but we’re still not able to provide a specific time.

When we reopen, we’ve locked all accounts – impacted or not – as a precaution that will require all members to reset their passwords to access their accounts.

We strongly advise all our members to practice good data security. Install and run security software and create strong, unique passwords.

Thank you for your continued patience and support – the kind posts we see from all of you on social media continue to make a real difference to the team here.

We know it’s very frustrating, there is light at the end of the tunnel, we thank you for having a bit more patience with us.

Many thanks,

Your BrickLink team

Update November 6th. 4.02 pm EST

Friday November 3rd, we temporarily closed the BrickLink site due to unusual activity.

Since then, the team has been working super hard to make sure we can reopen as soon as possible – and we’re getting closer to doing that.

Our investigations so far suggest that a very small percentage of our accounts may potentially have been accessed by unauthorized individuals. We’ll be in contact with people directly soon with more details.

Thank you for your patience and support – the kind posts we see from all of you on social media make a real difference to the team here.

We know it’s very frustrating and we’re sorry that BrickLink will unfortunately be closed for a bit longer.

Many thanks,

Your BrickLink team

Bricklink responds on Instagram on the statue of invoices being issued, and issues of payment.

Update November 5th. 4.40 pm EST

Friday we temporarily closed the BrickLink site due to unusual activity.

Since then, the team has been working super hard to make sure we can reopen as soon as possible – and we’re getting closer to doing that.

Thank you for your patience and support. We’re grateful to have such amazing members.

We know it’s frustrating and disappointing. We want to assure you we’re working as fast as we can – and not getting much sleep – to restore BrickLink.

Many thanks,

Your BrickLink team

Update November 4th. 3.55 pm EST We continue to investigate the unusual activity. We aim to restore normal operations as swiftly as possible.

Update November 4th. 3.58 am EST We continue to investigate the unusual activity. We want to make sure we take the time to investigate fully. We will be back up and running as soon as possible.

There has been no communication from the Bricklink team yet (I’ll update this post when they do say something), but across Bricklink Seller Groups on Facebook and the Bricklink Subreddit, there appears to have been a cybersecurity incident where several Stores and Seller accounts have been compromised.

Messages demanding Cryptocurrency as a ransom payment have been sighted in these forums, with the threat of deleting stores and inventory.

As a preventative measure to flush out these hackers, and assess the damage, it’s perfectly normal for the Bricklink System Administrators to block access to the site to ascertain the extent of this hack, how many accounts have been impacted and of course, the huge amount of work to reverse the damage.

Until we hear from Bricklink, we can only speculate on the extent of this incident, but like with any large cybersecurity incident, I would highly recommend changing your passwords, especially if your Bricklink account password is shared across your other accounts.

This is quite unlikely, but I’d also monitor your Paypal or Credit Card statements for any unusual activity. Bricklink doesn’t store payment information on its servers (I think it doesn’t), as it’s handled through a merchant gateway, but one can never be too sure these days.

This is really quite unfortunate, and I hope Bricklink communicates and sorts this issue out soon as Bricklink is such an important part of the community, and an important source of income for many.

In the absence of information, Redditor pshbrk has compiled a pretty detailed list of what we know so far about the Bricklink hack, which has a lot more information of what has emerged.

You can also visit the Bricklink Worldwide Buyers and Sellers Facebook group to see up-to-date discussions on this ongoing situation.

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