Pornhub Premium Users: Cyber Gang ShinyHunters Threatens Publication

Cybercriminals were able to steal data from a Pornhub service provider. The cyber gang “ShinyHunters” is now threatening to publish the data of Pornhub Premium users.

The news agency Reuters has apparently received a set of sample data from ShinyHunters, who claim to have stolen data belonging to Pornhub Premium users. They are also threatening to publish the data and are demanding a ransom payment in Bitcoin to delete the data and not publish it.

Reuters also has no information on the extent or details of the attack. However, the news agency was able to partially verify the provided data. At least three Pornhub customers, two from Canada and one from the USA, confirmed the authenticity of the data when asked, even though it is several years old. In total, ShinyHunters provided Reuters with data from 14 users of Pornhub's Premium offering. Six of these could be confirmed based on previous data leaks.

ShinyHunters did not disclose how they obtained the data, and they did not want to provide further details about the data leak. It therefore remains unclear how many customers are actually affected. There is also no information on the amount of the crypto ransom demand.

ShinyHunters offline

Currently, the dark web presence of ShinyHunters, who are currently appearing as the cyber gang conglomerate “Shiny Lapsu$ Spider” (for the ransomware groups Shiny Hunters, Lapsus$ and Scattered Spider), is offline. The most recent Telegram channel has also been unavailable since Wednesday night. It is therefore currently not possible to verify what the group has specifically published.

Pornhub itself has admitted that attackers have accessed data from premium customers via a Mixpanel attack. The Mixpanel attack became known at the end of November when OpenAI informed about a data theft of users of its services and APIs.

(dmk)