Hackers claim to have stolen personal data belonging to users of Pornhub, the global leader in online pornography, the specialist website Bleeping Computer reported on Monday, December 15. The hackers reportedly sent a ransom demand to the adult video platform, threatening to publish close to 200 million pieces of data relating to its paid subscribers. According to them, this data includes email addresses and viewing histories.
The news agency Reuters was able to review a sample provided by the hackers and confirmed the identities of three people who had previously been "premium" members of Pornhub. In a statement published on December 12, Aylo, the parent company of the platform, acknowledged a "cybersecurity incident" that affected premium users but denied any breach directly targeting the group's infrastructure.
The website explained that "analytics" data had been stolen from a third-party company providing services to Pornhub, Mixpanel. "This was not a breach of Pornhub Premium's systems," the company reiterated, adding that "no passwords, (...) payment details or government IDs" were stolen in the attack.
The contractor denies involvement
As Bleeping Computer noted, Mixpanel, a company that provides businesses with analytics services for their users' online activity, announced in November that it had discovered a hacking campaign aimed at fraudulently gaining access to clients' accounts. While the hackers currently trying to extort Pornhub told Reuters that the data did indeed come from Mixpanel, the company denied any connection. "We are confident Pornhub was not among those clients and that this data is unrelated to the November incident," the company told Reuters.
