AdultFriendFinder Got Hacked, 412M Accounts Exposed

AdultFriendFinder is the latest in a long list of online entities that were hacked in this year alone, which resulted in over 412 million accounts to become vulnerable. Aside from AdultFriendFinder, other sites in the Friend Finder network were affected as well, including Cams.com, Penthouse, Stripshow, and more.

The news was first posted at Leaked Source, which details exactly what happened. It turns out that the network of adult sites was hacked a month before, and now, hundreds of millions of accounts are exposed. The last time an adult website got hit this hard in terms of the number of subscribers affected was the case of Ashley Madison. That particular example resulted in 32 million account-holders having their names exposed to their family members, co-workers, and spouses.

AdultFriendFinder prides itself for supposedly being the “World’s largest sex & swinger community,” and thanks to the remaining societal disapproval of such taboo activities, getting exposed as a member isn’t exactly a thrilling prospect. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened thanks to a file inclusion vulnerability that gave hackers backdoor access, Tech Crunch reports

There’s also the possibility of weak protection, which enabled the hack in the first place. The network could have used plain text to store user passwords, which is incredibly unsafe. It could have also used SHA1 algorithm, which is one of the weakest encryption services in the market.

Although some of the user information includes membership status and IP login, ZDNet found that sexual preference was not part of the data exposed. So, even though relatives and friends of users will know their names and whether or not they are VIP members, at least none of their particular fetishes will be made public.

Then again, it would seem that a lot of the users made their accounts under fake names, Gizmodo reports. So, these users don’t have as much to worry about.