Data of US military personnel, government officials among data released.
Hackers have reportedly gained access to the database of adult dating and pornography sites managed by Friend Finder Network that contains account details of over 412 million users.
According to Leaked Source, a popular monitoring website, this is one of the largest data breaches ever recorded and details such as email addresses, passwords, dates of last visits, browser information, IP addresses and site membership status across sites run by Friend Finder Networks have now reached the hands of hackers.
The breach is said to have happened in October and reports suggest that it is the biggest ever hack after MySpace server was exposed, leading to more than 359 million user details getting into wrong hands.
Earlier the adult website Ashley Madison was attacked and over 33 million user accounts were compromised. The biggest ever hack recorded in the history of Internet is the attack on Yahoo in 2014 that gave hackers privilege to download over 500 million user data.
Friend Finder Networks is the firm that operates the website Adult Friend Finder, which has over 339 million registered members out of which 40 million log in at least once in every two years.
Friend Finder Networks runs the live sex camera site Cams.com that has close to 62 million users. The other sites under Friend Finder Networks that came under attack include Penthouse.com. Stripshow.com, iCam.com and an unconfirmed domain. In total, 412 million user data are believed to have been compromised.
Diana Ballou, Friend Finder Networks vice president, and senior counsel was quoted by ZDNet saying: “FriendFinder has received a number of reports regarding potential security vulnerabilities from a variety of sources. While a number of these claims proved to be false extortion attempts, we did identify and fix a vulnerability that was related to the ability to access source code through an injection vulnerability.”
He also confirmed that the company has sought the help of an external agency to investigate on the hack and would update customers on how to secure their accounts after more details are revealed. According to Leaked Source, the passwords of the hacked accounts have been altered to lowercase.
More startling is the revelation that the hack has put 78,301 US military email address, 5,650 US government emails and over 96 Hotmail accounts at the dispensation of hackers. There is no respite for the users who deleted their account as it seems like the hackers have also got access to 16 million deleted accounts.
This is the second time that Adult Friend Network server is being hacked. Earlier in May, 2015 account details of more than four million users, including their login details, emails, date of birth, postal code, sexual preferences and their interest in extramarital affairs were leaked by hackers.