Cyber criminals hacked the data of porn website Pornhub to demand ransom from premium members. The hacking group identified as "ShinyHunters" have threatened to pay users to publish their names and their search history publicly on the porn site.
The notorious ShinyHunters claimed that they have obtained sensitive data of premium members, including viewing and search history of users. The data is said to originate from a breach involving third-party analytics provider, Mixpanel. The incident has once again raised concerns about the long-term risks associated with third-party data analytics services, particularly when users' information is retained after several years.
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PornHub revealed that it had been cyber-attacked incident linked to Mixpanel, a widely used product analytics platform. Pornhub is a heavily used site and says it has more than 100 million daily visits globally.
The cyber crooks have reportedly had an access to over 200 million data records, including premium members’ email addresses, search and viewing activities and locations. Pornhub is a heavily used site and says it has more than 100 million daily visits globally.
The website added that the Canadian-owned Pornhub had received an extortion demand from ShinyHunters about the hack. The Reuters news agency on Wednesday also claimed to have spoken to a ShinyHunters member in an online chat who was demanding a payment in bitcoin to prevent the publication of data and delete it.
Pornhub said a “select” number of users had been affected and that it had stopped working with Mixpanel in 2021, indicating the data is not recent. “It is important to note this was not a breach of Pornhub Premium’s systems. Passwords, payment details and financial information remain secure and were not exposed,” said the pornography service.
Pornhub added that an “unauthorized party” had been able to extract a “limited set of analytics events for some users”. Other types of data taken include video URL, video name, keywords associated with the video, and the time the event occurred, according to BleepingComputer.