By RAPHAEL SATTER | AP
LONDON (AP) — A hacker claims to have compromised the personal information of more than 350,000 users after breaking into a disused website operated by pornography provider Brazzers.
Kate Miller, director of communications for site owner Manwin Holding SARL, said Saturday it was “currently investigating the issue” but that no credit card information has been leaked.
Miller said it appeared that the hacker had gained access to an inactive forum to help enter other, linked websites. She said people who were potentially affected were being notified of the security breach by the company.
In an email, she said that security was “a priority at all times” and that the company would do all it could to safeguard its users’ information. The email went on to blame the hacker for “illegal and prohibited cyber criminal activities.”
The breach is a potential embarrassment for Luxembourg-based Manwin, which runs some of the world’s best-known pornography websites.
A small sample of the hundreds of thousands of pieces of user data allegedly compromised were posted to the Internet earlier this week. Emails, usernames, and encrypted passwords were divulged, and in some cases it was possible to infer porn users’ full names and country of origin.
The hacker claiming responsibility for the breach told The Associated Press that he carried out the attack to draw attention to the site’s vulnerability.
“I didn’t do that for any money,” he said in an email.
He identified himself only as a 17-year-old living in Morocco and claimed allegiance to Anonymous, the global movement of cyber-mischief-makers who have carried out embarrassing attacks on record companies, the Church of Scientology, and the FBI.
