Potentially bad news for xHamster users. The porn site was reportedly breached and hackers have been trading account details on shady corners of the Web.
Vice's Motherboard obtained a copy of the database in question from subscription breach notification site LeakBase. It purportedly contains the xHamster account details of nearly 380,000 users, including usernames, email addresses, and "what appears to be poorly hashed passwords," Motherboard reports.
It's not clear how hackers obtained the database, though LeakBase says it was floating around on the dark Web "around the same time a hacker found a vulnerability in xHamster's website earlier this year," according to the report.
Whether the information is legit is still up for debate, however. In a statement, xHamster spokesperson Alex Hawkins said "The only way to respond to this news is to coin a new term: 'Fhack.' A fhack is best defined as a fake hack."
"There was a failed attempt to hack our database which occurred 4 years ago," he added. "The integrity of our user data is secure. Passwords are encrypted and impossible to hack. In short, this was a successful fhack; and a failed hack."
Motherboard says it independently verified the email addresses and usernames in the database.
"Motherboard attempted to create new xHamster accounts with a random selection of 50 email addresses from the database," the site reported. "When the email corresponded to an xHamster account, the site returned the message 'This email already exist! [sic]' All 50 addresses were already in use, and all but one of the related usernames were already taken too."
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The site then searched for the same email addresses on the Web, to check whether the data was already publicly available. The "vast majority," they found, "returned no relevant Google search results."
Regardless, if you have an xHamster account, it might be wise to change your password as a precaution. If you use your xHamster password for any other site, be sure to update your password there as well.
In September, the email addresses of nearly 800,000 users of the porn site Brazzers were exposed following a data breach. The leaked data originated from a hack of the company's forum, where users go to discuss porn scenes.